Idea Summit

"This is not a meeting. This is not a training session. This is not an exercise," declares Rolf Smith, who is standing before the Face 2005 Team -- 22 chemical engineers, biologists, and project leaders from Procter & Gamble Co. with a mandate to develop new products that will redefine the future of cosmetics. "This is an expedition. And there will be no whining. No sniveling. No excuses."

If Smith, 59, speaks with military authority, that's because he spent 24 years in the U.S. Air Force. His military career has included working with the Electronic Security Command, becoming an expert in artificial intelligence, and launching the air force's first Office of Innovation. (Indeed, by the time Smith retired from the air force in 1987, after declining an assignment at the Pentagon, he was known throughout the ranks as "Colonel Innovation.") But Smith doesn't just talk the military talk. He walks the walk. His baggy, khaki-colored cargo pants are zero fashion and all function. The dozen pockets of his safari vest are filled with gear. As flute music from the Bolivian Andes plays in the background, Smith paces around a room that's cluttered with tents, backpacks, and climbing ropes. Outside, a narrow path stretches toward the Potomac River.

The P&G people are puzzled -- and on edge. They are about to embark on a long, arduous, and potentially rewarding expedition. A Thinking Expedition. And Rolf Smith is their no-nonsense guide. "Please take off your watches," he instructs, "and place them in this basket." "Give up our watches?" a few mutter. "You've got to be kidding." He isn't kidding: "We will return them to you in five days."

The genuinely exciting news about the new world of business is that there is more room for creativity than ever. Smaller and smaller groups of smart people can do bigger and bigger things. Just ask the people who developed the first Netscape browser when they were kids just out of college, or the pair of Stanford graduate students who started Yahoo! as a way to postpone writing their PhD dissertations. Now the sobering news: You're only as good as your last great idea. The half-life of any innovation is shorter than ever. People, teams, and companies are feeling the heat to think up new products, services, and business models. What's the reward for one round of successful innovation? Even greater pressure to revisit your success, and to unleash yet another round of innovation.

That's precisely what these 22 P&G employees from Hunt Valley, Maryland are facing. They are part of P&G's high-stakes effort, dubbed Organization 2005, whose goal is to double the company's revenue (to $70 billion) by that year. Cathy Pagliaro, 34, an energetic associate director for P&G's cosmetics-product-development department and the woman responsible for launching this expedition, explains the challenge that her group faces: "Our CEO, Durk Jager, has declared that Organization 2005 is about three things: stretch, innovation, and speed. The challenge for our small group is to help make those words a reality. My department has a charter to do new and different things to help fulfill our revenue goal. But to do that, we can't think about things the way they've been thought about inside P&G for the past 162 years. The only way we can change is if we start to think differently. I don't know exactly where that will take us, but I do know that it looks different from where we are now."

Rolf Smith's job is to help the team begin to think differently -- and to turn what can feel at times like a crushing burden into a thrilling (if exhausting) intellectual adventure. Through his Virtual Thinking Expedition Co., based in Estes Park, Colorado, Smith has guided teams from some of the country's largest organizations -- IBM, DuPont, Ford, AT&T -- on expeditions driven by the human desire for a sense of adventure in the pursuit of the next big thing. "Americans instinctively understand the concept of an expedition," says Smith. "The history of the world is built on one expedition after another. It is part of our makeup and our psyche."

A Thinking Expedition combines creative problem solving with challenging outdoor experiential learning -- similar to an Outward Bound boot camp for the mind. "It's an accelerated unlearning process," Smith explains. "The days are intense, full, and demanding. There are no scheduled meals, no scheduled breaks. We deliberately design the expedition to push people out of their 'stupid zone' -- a place of mental and physical normalcy -- so that they can start to think differently, explore what they don't know, and discover answers to mission-critical problems."