Innovation @ Merage - UCI Paul Merage School of Business : Leadership Style, Strategy/Vision

Management Innovation and Leadership: The Moderating Role of Organizational Size

Charlie Baecker — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:20:00 GMT

Recent research on new managerial processes, practices and structures that can change the nature of managerial work show that this form of management innovation can be an important source of competitive advantage. Ignacio Vaccaro, Justin Jansen, Frans Van Den Bosch and Henk Volberda hone in on this research at the organization level in their paper, “Management Innovation and Leadership: The Moderating Role of Organizational Size.” Because top management has the ability to influence such management innovation within organizations, the authors investigate the role of leadership behavior.

They define two forms of leadership: transformational and transactional. They see transformational leadership as being “aimed at the followers’ identification with its purpose and common goals. It stimulates employees to attain to organizational goals by appealing to high-level needs for self-actualization.” Through its four dimensions of idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration, transformational leadership can affect all facets of management innovation. Transactional leadership, on the other hand, involves leaders who are “primarily concerned with gaining compliance from subordinates – which they will do by targeting their self interest – by agreeing upon the conditions and rewards that will follow the fulfillment of certain requirements. With two dimensions of contingent reward and active management by exception, transactional leadership is also positively related to management innovation within an organization.

The authors further find that organizational size moderates the effectiveness of both transformational and transactional leadership on management innovation. Their results indicate that the effectiveness of transformational leadership increases with organizational size. In contrast, smaller, less complex benefit from transactional leadership when realizing management innovation.

Paper

The Designful Company: How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation

Lynda Lawrence — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:24:00 GMT

By: Marty Neumeier: New Riders, 2009.

Despite its dreadful title, this little book is a gem. Neumeier explains why everyone should care about design (companies that win design awards have 100-200% higher returns, and must-have products are always because of good design). More important, he defines designers as everyone who makes something better, whether it’s an idea, a process or a product.

He also points out the difference between standard business thinking that measures “What is” and design thinking that posits “What could be.” Without the latter, he says, we’d all be driving the same cars and watching broadcast TV. As for getting these new ideas converted to reality, he has strong ideas about storytelling (good) and PowerPoint (bad).

Why should you care about design? Just substitute the words innovation or organizational change and you’ll see why his insights apply to just about everything you have on your to-do list for the next decade.

Definitely worth an hour of your time, I’d give it a 9.0 on the LL innovation meter. Recommended for managers, MBAs, and anyone interested in changing their organization’s status quo.

The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It

Lynda Lawrence — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:49:00 GMT

By: Joshua Ramo: Little, Brown, 2009.

While it’s not strictly a business book, this is the best book for business that I’ve reviewed this year. It is, in fact, a whole new way of facing the future of any endeavor: Ramo suggests that the only way to deal with uncertainty is to accept that you can’t possibly predict anything.

He begins with an analogy from physics. When you methodically add single grains of sand to a pile, there is absolutely no way to tell which grain will cause an avalanche. Then, using examples from Google to Hizb’allah, he explains that no successful organization has a vision or strategic plan that can anticipate all the changes in a global and interconnected world. The successful ones, he says, are those that constantly adapt to change.

For most businesses, that attitude is too frightening to contemplate. Strategic planning, quarterly earnings projections, and overpaid executives are not guarantees of anything. Instead, he recommends that organizations think long-term, holistically and flexibly. It’s not innovation as a growth or survival strategy—it’s innovation as an organizational structure, a product and a philosophy.

This one gets a 9.8 on the LL innovation meter. I’d recommend it for anyone who wants to be part of a viable organization in the next few decades. And if any of our nation’s political leaders have the time, it should be on their reading lists as well.

When Service Means Survival

admin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Abstract: In a series of articles BusinessWeek explores innovative and pragmatic ways to maintain customer service in these uncertain times.

Published: March 9, 2009

Link: BusinessWeek

What Would Google Do?

admin — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:07:00 GMT

By Jeff Jarvis; Collins Business, 2009

Take everything you know about business, turn it upside down, and that’s pretty much what Google is doing. If conventional wisdom suggests that people should pay for your product, Google’s is free. If you might support that weird business strategy by running ads on your front page, Google’s is absolutely pristine.

In Jarvis’s view, every business has a lot to learn from one of the few profitable companies in these turbulent times. He starts with some counterintuitive Google premises: give control away, make mistakes often, let your customers be your ads, niches are more profitable than mass markets, everything is public, get out of the way.

The last half of the book is where it gets interesting--rethinking the business models of major industries in the Google way: manufacturing, real estate, communications, airlines, insurance, education. There are some provocative ideas, and at the very least, some challenges to long-held assumptions that are worth pondering.

I’d give it an 8 on the LL innovation meter, good for anyone who makes strategic decisions or wants to start the next Google.

Lynda Lawrence is an innovation consultant with Ideaworks Consulting. She teaches Strategic Innovation and Design Management at the Merage School at UCI, and is an advisor to the Beall Center.

P&G's Innovation Culture

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:22:00 GMT

Abstract: How we built a world-class organic growth engine by investing in people.

Published: Autumn 2008

Authors: A.G. Lafley with Ram Charan

Link: strategy+business

P&G Changes Its Game

admin — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:32:00 GMT

Abstract: P&G is using "design thinking" to tackle difficult business problems. While this may seem like the latest innovation buzzword, P&G is using the technique to generate effective ideas and, more importantly, change its culture.

Published: July 28, 2008

Author: Jenanne Rae

Link: BusinessWeek

To CIOs: CEOs Will Disrupt Companies to Challenge Them

admin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:14:00 GMT

Abstract: In a speech to CIOs attending IT Forum EMEA, George Colony, the CEO of Forrester, notes that the role of CEOs today is to challenge their companies to innovate and he warned that they are as much a source of disruption as market forces.

Published: June 11, 2008

Author: Mark Chillingworth

Link: CIO

Take Your Biggest Problem...and Skip It.

admin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:35:00 GMT

Abstract: Think you have to solve those big problems to move ahead? Think again. Sometimes the best way to a solution is to skip over it.

Published: June 2008

Author: Daniel Burrus

Link: Reliable Plant

Surviving Change: Kodak's Instant Marketing Transformation

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:36:00 GMT

Abstract: How did Kodak survive the digital transformation of the photography business that used to represent 70% of their business? By focusing on growth and including accountability as part of its innovation framework.

Published: May 14, 2008

Author: Peter Paul Roosen and Tatsuya Nakagawa

Link: IndustryWeek

Obama on Innovation

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:49:00 GMT

Abstract: In this YouTube video filmed last fall, Presidential candidate Barak Obama presents his innovation agenda at Google's Mountain View headquarters.

Link: YouTube

Posted: November 14, 2007

How They Did It: Seven Intraprenuer Success Stories

admin — Wed, 07 May 2008 04:08:00 GMT

Abstract: "Embarking on a new product or service should be easy with the resources of an established company at your disposal, right? Not necessarily. If you’re launching a start-up within a bigger company, you’ll have a host of issues to overcome ... find out how intrapreneurs at Kodak, Toyota, Yahoo, and other big companies pursued bold ideas that advanced their companies — and themselves"

Published: bnet, April 17, 2008

Author: Georgia Flight

Link: bnet

Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change

admin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:50:00 GMT

Abstract: “The authors suggest ways large companies can capitalize on opportunities that normally would not fit in with their processes or values. They explore a model for determining which organizational resources, structures, processes, and values are needed to produce successful innovations.”

Published: Harvard Business Publishing, March 1, 2000, 10 pages (fee for download or hardcopies)
Authors: Clayton M. Christensen, Michael Overdorf

Link: http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml;jsessionid=W0UAZDFFUOAS2CTEQENSELQ?id=R00202

Publication Description: “Why didn't a single minicomputer company succeed in the personal computer business? Why did only one department store--Dayton Hudson--become a leader in discount retailing? Why can't large companies capitalize on the opportunities brought about by major, disruptive changes in their markets? It's because organizations, independent of the people in them, have capabilities. And those capabilities also define disabilities. As a company grows, what it can and cannot do becomes more sharply defined in certain predictable ways. The authors have analyzed those patterns to create a framework managers can use to assess the abilities and disabilities of their organization as a whole. When a company is young, its resources--its people, equipment, technologies, cash, brands, suppliers, and the like--define what it can and cannot do. As it becomes more mature, its abilities stem more from its processes--product development, manufacturing, budgeting, for example. In the largest companies, values--particularly those that determine what are its acceptable gross margins and how big an opportunity has to be before it becomes interesting--define what the company can and cannot do. Because resources are more adaptable to change than processes or values, smaller companies tend to respond to major market shifts better than larger ones. The authors suggest ways large companies can capitalize on opportunities that normally would not fit in with their processes or values; it all starts with understanding what the organizations are capable of.”

Strategies to Enhance Innovation

admin — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 23:10:00 GMT

The author provide an overview of how innovation can be encoraged in a company. The two steps that are suggested in this article focus on building the culture and then realizing and working towards the innovative ideas quickly.

By Mary Ka Vona, Michael DeMarco
Chief Learning Officer - CLOMedia.com

Link: http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/mediatec/clo1207/ (page 28)