According to a McKinsey & Company study, more than 70% of senior executives said that innovation will be one of the top three drivers of growth for their companies.

Unfortunately, at the same time they also said they were “generally disappointed” in their ability to promote it—but they knew intuitively that any sustainable effort must be grounded by their company’s people and culture.

The Nielsen Company, a leader in providing media measurement and other consumer and marketing information, recently did a study examining over 50 dimensions of new product development. Success among the largest packaged-goods companies varied widely. A key finding: In those companies where management stays away from the day-to-day development activity, much more revenue from new products was generated. Does it follow then, that the best place for “blue-sky” innovators is far away from corporate headquarters?

According to the San Jose Mercury News, when factories in China build products for global brands, they get “four pennies on the dollar” for a pair of Nike shoes, or maybe $25 dollars from a popular consumer electronics device that sells for $750. They leave “a boatload of money” on the table, according to the secretary-general of the China Industrial Overseas Development and Planning Association.

So China is no longer satisfied with being just the world’s factory—it wants to move to the “top” of the supply chain where margins are fattest. To do that, the country needs it own mega brand names, and intellectual property. Lenovo was purchased from IBM, Volvo was purchased from Ford. But much, much more needs to be done.

And they need to move quickly, as new contract manufacturing aspirants from Mexico, Eastern Europe, and even Vietnam nip at their heels with even lower component costs and wages.

In January, 2010, another major consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, announced that it had surveyed over 300 employees at 28 leading products companies.

Once again, there were three fundamental new product development lessons that emerged: the most successful companies develop clear project goals, they emphasize cultural behaviors that lead to success, and they build strong relationships with customers. Companies that employed these principles were twice as likely to meet ROI targets.

For simplicity, we’ll distill those practices down to three core words: Goals, Culture, and Customers.

Years ago, a major consulting firm, Arthur Andersen, started a database of best practices for business activities. Later, after information and experience had accumulated through many years and possibly thousands of implementations, clients asked if any fundamental lessons had emerged from the more than thirty thousand pages of insight.

The response was yes, there were three things that stood out. The most successful companies were highly focused on building strong and lasting relationships with customers, they constantly improved their own businesses at all levels, and they used processes to keep those two main objectives running smoothly.

For simplicity, we’ll distill those practices down to three core words: Relationships, Proactive, and Processes.