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The Study of Innovation – A Mythic Quest

The Study of Innovation – A Mythic Quest. Liisa V ä likangas Director of Research Strategos Institute Berkeley-Finland Day, October 18, 2002. The Quest (1): Escaping the cold. The Quest (2): Fighting the windmills. Cervantes: Don Quixote. The Quest (3): Making money.

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The Study of Innovation – A Mythic Quest

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  1. The Study of Innovation – A Mythic Quest Liisa Välikangas Director of Research Strategos Institute Berkeley-Finland Day, October 18, 2002

  2. The Quest (1): Escaping the cold

  3. The Quest (2): Fighting the windmills Cervantes: Don Quixote

  4. The Quest (3): Making money Why did Sancho Panza follow Don Quixote? Don Adventure Sancho

  5. The Quest (4): Orbiting the giant hairball Gordon McKenzie

  6. What I will talk about: • Myths related to innovation as management practice • Quests related to research on innovation

  7. Myths of Management Practice • The case for innovation can be made financially and a priori. • There is a “clean” solution (a process or a structure) to the problem of innovation. • You get what you pay for, including innovation. • There is a (qualitative, manageable) difference between winners and losers. • Failure disqualifies an innovation.

  8. Myth 1. The case for innovation Q: “We are thinking about making our company more innovative. Can you tell us, however, how we can measure the value innovation creates?” A: “Happy to do that. Can you tell me first, please, how you currently measure the value your HR, legal department, and top management creates annually?” (They don’t call back.)

  9. Myth 2. There is a “clean” solution

  10. Myth 3. Pay for innovation • “If you put too much emphasis on financial rewards, greed takes over.” Leo Roothardt, Shell GameChanger • “People engage in radical innovation not because they get paid for it, but because they want to.” Gene Meieran, Intel Fellow How do you pin the shadow of the future on the Invisible Hand?

  11. Myth 4. You can tell a winner by looking at it The Null Hypotheses: “Tim Draper is wrong in 99.99% of cases but when he is right, he is really right.” The difference between innovative and not-so-innovative people is that the successful ones try more often.

  12. Myth 5. Failure (yes, there are some bad ideas)

  13. Myths in Innovation Research • Researchers and practitioners have interests in common. • Describing corporate realities is straightforward. • We have a theory of organizational value creation.

  14. Quest 1. Rigor and practice We know a lot more about what managers ought to do than what they are actually doing.

  15. Researcher and Practitioner Articles Survey of Two Management Journals (November 2000 to October 2002) c Harvard Business Review Administrative Science Quarterly

  16. And the answer always is…. Thinking out-of-the-box A long-term view Trust Motivation (and commitment) A license to fail small An external (customer) focus CourageTime Leadership A common vision

  17. Quest 2. Whose reality? An employee? A PhD student? A professor? A journalist? A best-selling author? A consultant? A manager? A case writer?

  18. Warning: An advertisement Strategos Institute is building a professional research organization that studies management-as-is yet seeks to contribute to its further development. In our view: • Organizations would benefit from management practice that is more innovation-friendly. • Management research would benefit from studies that are less institutionally indebt.

  19. Quest 3. How do organizations create value? • By exploiting labor • By getting a discount (Save 30%!) relative to a market transaction • By specializing, coordinating, and taking risks over time • By sustaining institutions and social structures that make life and work (sometimes) meaningful • By sustaining complex relationships and investments over time so that innovation can mature

  20. Innovation is not enough: The challenge of renewal Innovation as experimentation is relatively well understood. Connecting innovations to core business competencies, assets, and infrastructure is not well understood (within the existing organizational context).

  21. Call for Innovation Research Need research that is: • Rooted in management capability • Seeking to advance management practice • Theoretically informed, conceptually enlightened • Empathetic to the practitioner • Addresses the continuous negotiation between change and continuity in a firm • Adds to our understanding of how firms create value

  22. Contact information: Dr. Liisa Välikangas Director of Research The Strategos Institute lvalikangas@strategos.com 1 650 233 1100 ext. 239 (or 1 650 851 2095)

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