Q&A with Andrew Thompson, CEO of Proteus

[caption id="attachment_3207" align="alignleft" width="317" caption="CEO of Proteus Andrew Thompson"][/caption]

Andrew S. Thompson, entrepreneur and CEO of the biomedical company Proteus sat down with Adam Bryant of the New York Times business section to discuss his thoughts on how to run a company. The two discussed many different management philosophies as well as ways on rewarding employees for innovative and proactive ideas.

Q. Can you talk about how to create an innovative culture?

A. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 22 years in Silicon Valley, so that essentially creates a life that’s defined by doing things that are innovative and different. When you build a company or organization that’s going to take on those kinds of challenges, I think there are two things that are really important.

One is that you reward innovative and new things in ways that are very obvious and are very visible — it’s the culture of what you talk about, what you celebrate, what you reward, what you make visible.  For example, in this company, which is very heavily driven by intellectual

property, if you file a patent or have your name on a patent, we give you a little foam brain.

But then, more important, right in our front lobby, there are shelves of big glass jars and everyone’s name in the company is on one of them — they’re like an apothecary jar.  And that’s where your brains go.  And so we have this huge wall that’s full of brains.

There’s no money in it.  We don’t pay people to file patents because we’re an innovative company.  That’s part of your job. But we recognize it and we make it extremely visible.  Everyone who walks in the front door just looks and says “wow.” That’s a very specific and extremely powerful way that we promote and reward innovation.

Read more at The New York Times Business Section