Now P&G is applying its innovation prowess -- and marketing muscle -- to IT. By marketing some of its internally developed IT, P&G is gaining additional revenue while improving its own in-house IT products and services.

The roots of P&G's IT commercialization efforts go back to the late 1990s, when former Chairman, CEO and President Durk A. Jager began preaching about innovation. His plans, which have since been continued by current CEO A.G. Lafley, included adopting great ideas from P&G's business partners and remarketing some of its own intellectual property (IP).

Case in point: P&G has remarketed Power Factor, a set of technologies and work processes designed to improve an organization's manufacturing throughput. P&G has been using these systems internally since the early 1990s and began licensing them to other companies in 2000, says Jack J. Ridge, director of external business development (EBD).

In 1999, P&G created the EBD group to identify internally developed IP, such as technologies and business proc-esses, that could be repackaged and licensed to other companies.

P&G isn't the first company that has successfully marketed some of its internally developed IT. For example, The Men's Wearhouse Inc. in Houston developed software several years ago that stores a customer's sizes to make it easier for spouses to shop for their husbands, says Cathy Hotka, senior vice president of technology and business development at the Retail Industry Leaders Association in Arlington, Va. The software was eventually sold to Retek Inc., which has since been acquired by Oracle Corp.