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The Innovation Catalysts
One day in 2007, midway through a five-hour PowerPoint presentation, Scott Cook realized that he wasn’t another Steve Jobs. At first it was a bitter disappointment. Like many entrepreneurs, Cook wanted the company he had cofounded to be like Apple—design driven, innovation intensive, wowing consumers year in and year out with fantastic offerings. But that kind of success always seemed to need a powerful visionary at the top.
This article is about how Cook and his colleagues at the software development company Intuit found an alternative to the Steve Jobs model: one that has enabled Intuit to become a design-driven innovation machine. Any corporation—no matter how small or prosaic its business—can make the same grassroots transformation if it really wants to.

The Birth of the Idea
Intuit’s transformation arguably began in 2004, with its adoption of the famous Net Promoter Score. Developed by Fred Reichheld, of Bain & Company, NPS depends on one simple question for customers: How likely are you, on a scale of 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely), to recommend this product or service to a colleague or friend? “Detractors” answer from 0 to 6, “passives” answer 7 or 8, and “promoters” answer 9 or 10. A company’s Net Promoter Score is the percentage of promoters less the percentage of detractors.
For the first couple of years, Intuit saw its NPS rise significantly, owing to a number of marketing initiatives. But by 2007 NPS growth had stalled. It was not hard to see why. Although Intuit had lowered its detractor percentage substantially, it had made little headway with promoters. Customer recommendations of new products were especially disappointing.

Clearly, Intuit needed to figure out how to galvanize its customers. Cook, a member of Procter & Gamble’s board of directors, approached Claudia Kotchka, then P&G’s vice president of design innovation and strategy, for advice. Following their discussions, Cook and Steve Bennett, then Intuit’s CEO, decided to focus on the role of design in innovation at a two-day off-site for the company’s top 300 managers. Cook created a one-day program on what he called Design for Delight (D4D)—an event aimed at launching Intuit’s reinvention as a design-driven company.
The centerpiece of the day was that five-hour PowerPoint presentation, in which Cook laid out the wonders of design and how it could entice Intuit’s customers. The managers listened dutifully and clapped appreciatively at the end, as they were supposed to; Cook was, after all, a company founder. Nevertheless, he was disappointed by his reception. Despite some interest in the ideas presented, there was little energy in the room,

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