"Nature Becomes You" is more than just a marketing tag-line for Burt's Bees. The Durham, N.C.-based manufacturer of natural personal-care products-best known for its popular lip balm-sees sustainability as the starting point for its innovation process. "We really do try to minimize the environmental impact from beginning to end in the ingredients we choose and how we manufacture and pretty much everything we do," says Ken McLellan, business connection leader for Burt's Bees, which was acquired by the Clorox Co. (IW 500/163) in November 2007. McLellan, speaking at the 2012 Front End of Innovation conference in Orlando, Fla., detailed the three "pillars" that serve as the foundation of the company's innovation efforts.
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