Innovation @ Merage - UCI Paul Merage School of Business : Management Processes

Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don’t Seem to Matter…But Really Do.

admin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:53:00 GMT

By Melinda Blau and Karen L. Fingerman, W.W. Norton (2009). While this book builds on the established notion of weak ties being valuable information sources, it also offers a handful of insights into how those weak ties work in innovation. It starts with a simple self test: a list of 22 occupations. You check off whether you’re related to someone in that field, are friends with someone, or just know them as what you might call acquaintances—someone you could talk to. Most people know people in about six or seven of the occupations—the best performer could check off 19. According to Blau and Fingerman, the more of them you know, the more likely you are to get diverse experience, ideas, and more tools for solving problems. It even works virtually. When InnoCentive posted scientific inquiries, within four years 80,000 people had signed up—and the best solutions came from diverse groups of scientists in a variety of fields. This book is eye-opening on a personal level (you’re more likely to find a new job through these consequential strangers in your network than through friends and family), and it offers a number of examples that reinforce the importance of diverse opinions in creating breakthrough ideas. I’d give it an 8.5 on the LL Innovation Meter for anyone who wants to increase your own effectiveness or that of your team.

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.

Assessing Innovation Metrics: McKinsey Global Survey Results

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:43:00 GMT

Abstract: A recent McKinsey Global Survey shows that companies are satisfied, overall, with their use of metrics to assess innovation portfolios - though many findings suggest that they shouldn't be. The companies that get the highest returns from innovation do metrics well; these organizations tend to assess innovation more comprehensively than the others.

Published: November 2008

Authors: Vanessa Chan, Chris Musso, Vankatesh Shankar, with George Day and David J. Reibstein

Link: The McKinsey Quarterly

Does Globalization Lead to Innovation?

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:38:00 GMT

Abstract: Competition is supposed to spur innovation. But the authors of this study found that the opposite is true for domestic firms in emerging economies. They examined 27 “transition” economies across eastern Europe and central Asia to understand how globalization — foreign direct investment, trade, and increased competition with firms operating in their home countries — affects markets and the likelihood that incumbents will develop new products and technologies. The authors looked at data from the 2002 and 2005 Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey.

Published: January 2008

Authors: Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Jan Svejnar, and Katherine Terrell

Link: strategy+business

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

In Search of Growth Leaders

admin — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:08:00 GMT

Abstract: Most companies have managers who can turbocharge results. The trick is finding -- and nurturing -- them. This article is the product of three years of interviews and testing – it is a look at the characteristics and strategies that distinguish growth leaders, as well as a guide to developing such managers in any company.

Published: Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2008

Authors: Sean D. Carr, Jeanne M. Liedtka, Roberts Rosen, Robert E. Wiltbank

Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121441083243003809.html

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

Six Keys to Building New Markets by Unleashing Disruptive Innovation

admin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:33:00 GMT

Abstract: "Managers know they need growth to survive—but innovation isn't easy. In this Harvard Management Update article, HBS professor Clayton Christensen and co-authors detail the six keys to creating new-growth businesses."

Published: Harvard Business Working Knowledge, March 10, 2003
Authors: Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Scott D. Anthony

Link: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3374.html

How to Pick Managers for Disruptive Growth

admin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:20:00 GMT

Abstract: "Right Stuff managers may be entirely wrong to lead a new-growth business. An excerpt from The Innovator's Solution by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael Raynor."

Published: Harvard Business Working Knowledge, October 23, 2003
Authors: Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor

Link: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3712.html

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)

Measuring the Performance You Want

admin — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:58:00 GMT

Measuring the Performance You Really Want

By Jone L. Pearce
Professor of Organization and Management

There is no doubt about the importance of accountability, but accountability for what, exactly?

The power of what is measured to drive performance is clear. The difficulty is not in understanding this but knowing how to set up job performance measures you really want. Perfect measurement of employee performance is very rare in practice. If it were possible, organizations could hire contractors rather than employees. This means the popular hope expressed in the box below is nearly always a false hope.

True or False?
We just need to design a better performance measurement system.

We have employees because we cannot precisely measure everything we might want from them in advance, and we will always depend on their willingness to exercise good judgment. But we still want employees to have clear expectations about what they should do and be accountable for their actions. This dilemma can be addressed in part by carefully avoiding the following impediments to measuring the employee performance we really want.

MEASURING QUALITY

The measurable actions and performance outcomes are not always the actions and performance outcomes most needed. A rigid adherence to what is most measurable can result in goal displacement: neglect of what you really want to achieve in favor of what is most easily measured. This can lead to serious problems for organizational performance.

One form of goal displacement is a sole focus on performance quantity because it is easily measured: sales volume, deadlines met, earnings targets exceeded, and the like. For most jobs, these outputs should be measured.

However, alone they are incomplete measures of most jobs because they say nothing about performance quality, something that usually requires someone’s subject judgment after the fact. Sales volume may be important, but not if it comes from front loading the orders and so robbing sales from the next reporting period. Deadlines must be met, but not by producing incomplete and thoughtless reports.

Furthermore, if good job performance is defined solely as numeric targets, no one should be surprised if employees produce quantity without helping customers and co-workers, problem-solving, and exercising good judgment. They are just doing what they have been told the organization really wants.

Goal displacement can be avoided by assessing performance quality and contextual performance along with quantity measures. For example, sales associates might also be judged on the number of calls to clients and client evaluations of the associates. Examples of good judgment and citizenship can be recorded and discussed during feedback sessions.

However, quality and behavioral assessments can rarely be specified with the same precision as performance quantity measures. Assessments of work quality and employee effort often rely on someone’s judgment, and so are subject to interpretation and dispute. Such measures will be contentious and never perfectly satisfactory to everyone. Recognizing the imperfection of job performance measurements is fundamental to managerial maturity.

MEASURING INNOVATION

Specific, difficult goals encourage employees to meet these goals, but because innovation is inherently unpredictable and unknowable, it cannot be subject to strict accountability for goals met. Such goal accountability can be interpreted as high evaluation pressure, leading to less experimentation and innovation. In practice, employees are admonished to innovate, but innovation is rarely measured.

Years ago a major bank established a program to promote innovations in new products and customer service. However, employees’ performance was still measured as meeting routine targets such as number of new customer accounts. There was little innovation. This bank’s attempt to encourage innovation is all too common: because innovation could not be defined in advance with specific goals and measures, it was left completely outside the performance management system. Organizations that say they want innovation, but hold employees accountable for what is most easily measured, will not get innovation from their employees.

Research indicates that having multiple performance measures, such as current job performance and innovation, does not impede experimentation as long as there is low evaluation pressure. Just because innovation must be assessed after the fact does not mean it cannot be assessed as part of expected job performance.

WHAT IS REALLY IMPORTANT WILL CHANGE

Change within organizations is inevitable. And change continuously undermines existing employee accountability systems.

All measurement systems decay over time, something that Marshall Meyer has called the performance paradox, showing that once a measure of performance is used to evaluate, those being evaluated will seek to improve their performance on that measure. Over time, they either learn how to perform better on that measure or are removed for poor performance and who are evaluated on that measure will do well on it. This inevitable process leads organizations to continuously add new measures that can better differentiate performance. But again, performance inevitably improves on the new measures, and so other measures should be added.

Performance paradox is why we often find very baroque measurement systems, as evaluators constantly seek to discover the better performers, and performers constantly seek to improve on their performance measures. Over time, measurement systems can become extremely elaborate and complex, with ever more time and resources devoted to maintaining them. The more performance measurement is used to differentiate employees, the more severe this decay will be.

Too often, this ratings inflation is not correctly attributed to the external cause of the performance paradox, but is falsely attributed to soft-hearted performance raters. This mistaken internal attribution has led to attempts to force dispersion (i.e., must have high and low performers in a predetermined distribution) on a measure on which all employees are actually performing identically. Such strongarmed human resources policies are rightly decried as arbitrary and unfair by both the employees and the managers rating their performance.

These forced performance distributions are all too frequent, and as Marshall Meyer has persuasively demonstrated, based on an ignorance of the inevitable decay of all measures used to differentiate performers. It is fairer and more credible to add new measures than to force a distribution of ratings on a performance measure with no actual differences between high and low performers.

Inevitably, attempts to change and adapt organizations are undermined by existing employee measurement systems. The more detailed the performance management system, and the more specific the goals, the greater the likelihood that existing accountability systems will undermine change. The more sophisticated and elaborate the measurement system, the more resistant everyone is to changing it.

How exactly will employees need to allocate their efforts on these new initiatives? Employees worry about how they will fare under new systems. If the new performance measurement system is not calibrated correctly, will they still be judged fairly? Furthermore, change requires managers and employees to devote considerable time to redesigning performance measurement systems, and this takes time away from other job responsibilities.

Tips on Performance Quality:

• Approach performance measurement as you would diagnose any quality improvement effort: use process flow charts and cause-and-effect diagrams to identify wasteful practices, rework, sources of conflict, and opportunities for improvement.
• Performance problems should first be viewed for any possible problems in system design rather than rushing to blame individuals.
• Initiative, quality and innovation should be identified as necessary components of job performance, and examples of successful performance should be identified and discussed during performance reviews.
• Employees should be held accountable for quality improvement suggestions as well as for quantitative performance goals.

Influence of Founding Teams' Affiliations

admin — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:57:00 GMT

The Influence of Founding Teams’ Affiliations on Company Behavior

By Christine Beckman
Assistant Professor of Organization and Management

What type of management team impacts a new company the most?

This paper argues that the composition of a company’s founding team—in particular, the prior affiliations of team members—shapes the behavior of new companies.

Firms with founding teams whose members had worked at the same company engage in exploitation, meant in its most positive context, because they have shared understandings and can act quickly. Conversely, founding teams whose members have worked at many different companies have unique ideas and contacts that encourage exploration. In addition, firms whose founding teams have both common and diverse prior-company affiliations have advantages that allow them to grow.

The terms “exploration” and “exploitation” have been used broadly to capture a wide array of a firm’s actions and behaviors. Exploratory behaviors are those that increase variance and generate internal variety (1). Exploration involves radical innovation, creating new markets and products, frequent change and discovery (2).

Exploitive behaviors are variance-decreasing and efficiency-oriented (3). Exploitation involves incremental innovation, implementation, refinement, routinization, local search and efficiency (4).

Although there are benefits to doing both, organizations that explore may have processes, strategies, structures and capabilities quite distinct from those engaging in exploitation (5). Existing research suggests there is an important antecedent to exploration and exploitation: managers who create the right structures or develop supportive contexts (6). How do managers decide which structure or processes to adopt?

EXECUTIVE CHOICES DRIVEN BY THE PAST

Managers bring ideas with them when they move across corporate boundaries, and an executive’s career experiences shape the range of actions she or he will consider at a new firm (7).

This study examines groups of executives that comprise a new company’s founding teams and argue that their prior experiences pre-dispose firms to engage in explorative or exploitative behaviors. In a broader sense, this view suggests that team composition both informs and constrains later action by the firm.

Prior affiliations of management team members shape company exploration and exploitation behaviors. Teams with some common prior-company affiliations share a language and a vision (8) that enable them to easily implement and routinize activities. Teams with diverse prior-company affiliations have different perspectives and points of view that enable them to develop new ideas.

Thus, firms whose management-team members have shared affiliations should be more likely to pursue exploitive behaviors such as improving on existing processes and moving new products or processes quickly to market. In contrast, firms whose teams have diverse affiliations should be more likely to pursue explorative behaviors such as investigating multiple ideas and becoming technical pioneers.

MIX OF DIVERSE AND COMMON TEAMS

Overall, this study develops the concept of team affiliations as an important antecedent to corporate exploration
and exploitation. Imagine two engineers from the same company deciding they should exploit an innovation that their current employer is not exploiting. Or imagine two sales representatives from different firms comparing notes and deciding to take advantage of a market opportunity that neither firm has acknowledged. The experiences of the individuals shape the ideas that are considered, and the combination of experiences are thus embedded in the new firm that is created (9).

LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND NARRATIVES

Founding team members with prior common-company affiliations have a shared language, culture and narratives. A shared language suggests a common perspective and trustworthiness (10). A shared organizational culture provides a common frame of reference, a shared vision and set of goals, and a conceptual filter that helps generate expectations about work (11). A shared narrative suggests that people from the same company will have many of the same stories and examples of appropriate and inappropriate behaviors.

In fact, common work experiences affect the development of shared benefits and culture as well as firm performance (12). Eisenhadt and Schoonhoven, in 1990, found that founding teams with joint prior work experience had higher levels of growth than teams with less overlapping experience. They discussed the cohesion stemming from managers having worked together in the past, but this study finds that this cohesion may result from shared affiliations as well as from direct experience with one another.

Hypothesis 1: Founding teams with common prior company affiliations are likely to engage in exploitive behaviors.

EXTERNAL SOURCES

Although common company affiliations may give a team shared understandings, firms also need access to external social capital to improve the amount of available information. External social capital refers to the actual and potential resources, outside information and new ideas obtained through external ties (13). Although common prior affiliations build internal communication, diverse prior affiliations provide new insights and knowledge that allow firms to pursue explorative, innovative behavior. External social capital increases the heterogeneity of available information, encourages deeper deliberations and discussions about the reasons for variety, and can result in debate and the surfacing of new alternatives (14).

Access to information, contacts and perspectives from a diverse set of company affiliations should encourage and facilitate exploration and innovation. Explorative behaviors include efforts to win a technology race in a new niche or to gain competitive advantage by being the first to develop new, hitherto unproven, technologies. When founders come from a range of prior companies, the common knowledge they share includes broader market issues.

Hypothesis 2: Founding teams with diverse prior company affiliations are likely to engage in explorative behaviors.

MANAGING EXPLORATION AND EXPLOITATION

Firms capable of both exploring and exploiting do better than firms rooted in either one (15). Research by He and Wong in 2004 found companies that had both strategies had higher growth rates than other firms.

Within a larger ambidextrous organization, the parallel operation of exploring and exploitation units can lead to exploration and exploitation at the organizational level. Entrepreneurial firms, however, are more likely to exist as a single business unit.

The question, then, is whether the same team can engage in both behaviors. Studies cited above suggest that engaging in both exploration and exploitation may be particularly difficult. The pattern of affiliations in a founding team may be important for understanding which firms are able to do both and, thus, this pattern may be important for understanding a company’s performance.

Diversity of poor affiliations alone will not improve performance because diversity encourages innovation but not implementation. Common prior affiliations alone will not improve performance because shared affiliations promote efficiency but not new discoveries. Teams with both common and diverse prior company affiliations will have the shared understandings to efficiently transmit knowledge and the unique perspectives to support innovation and change.

Firms whose founding teams have both common and diverse affiliations will be more likely to recruit managers with both types of affiliations and will both explore and exploit over time.

Hypothesis 3: Firms whose founding teams have both common and diverse prior company affiliations will have higher levels of performance.

METHODS OF THIS STUDY

Data for this paper were drawn from a longitudinal study of 141 young high-technology firms in Silicon Valley, particularly those in computer hardware and software, telecommunications, medical and biological technologies, manufacturing, research and semiconductors. Sampled firms had at least ten employees and were no more than ten years old.

Trained MBA and doctoral students conducted semi-structured interviews with a member of the founding team of each firm to learn about their founding teams. Sixty-four percent of the firms reported that their founding teams evolved before the companies were formed. The study controls for factors such as industry and whether the firm receives venture capital funding.

CONCLUSIONS

The results support the hypothesis and suggest that prior company affiliations of a founding team predict whether a firm pursues exploratory and exploitive behavior. Firms whose founding teams have both types of affiliations are more likely to grow over time.

This article indicates that teams are more constrained by history than current work suggests and that differences in firm exploration and exploitation are built in when the team is formed. Thus, ambidextrous firms may be those whose teams have significant common and diverse experiences when they were formed.

These results confirm that initial starting positions shape the potential for change and growth (16). The link between firm growth and founding team affiliation is consistent with the path of dependencies of learning. Furthermore, research indicating that the founding teams are generally formed for reasons of convenience (17) suggest a founding team’s ability to support innovation and incremental learning may be an accident of founding.

These findings also contribute to network theory in important ways. In addition to shared norms developing through close relationships, shared values and understandings develop through identification and experience with a common former organization, even if employees did not work for the organization at the same time.

This research suggests that managers pay more attention, during the company’s founding, to creating a team with both common and unique priorcompany affiliations. This is not to say that, without such initial team planning, history dictates a firm’s outcomes. This research suggests that rather than focusing solely on functional experience, race, or gender, managers should consider more subtle experiences that shape perceptions and alters team dynamics: prior company affiliations.

By examining the antecedents of explorative and exploitative behavior in organizations, this article develops links between the team and the firm’s levels of analysis. Team-level priorcompany affiliations, and experiences more generally, influence company-wide choices and behaviors. Firms that have founding teams whose members have both diverse and common affiliations are more likely to grow over time. This suggests that team composition is an important part of a company’s ambidexterity.

Footnotes:
(1) McGrath, 2001; Tushman and Smith, 2002.
(2) Katila & Ahuja, 2002; Miner, Bassoff & Moorman, 2001 Rosenkopf
and Nerkar, 2001.
(3) March, 1991.
(4) Beckman, Haunschild and Phillips, 2004; Benner & Tushman,
2003; March, 1991, March, 2001.
(5) Benner & Tushman, 2002; Katila & Ahuja, McGrath, Rosenkopf &
Almeida, 2003.
(6) Brown & Eisenhardt, 1997; Gibson & Birkenshaw, 2004; Smith &
Tushman, 2005; Tushman & O’Reilly, 1996.
(7) Baty, Evan & Rothermel, 1971; Boeker, 1997; Kraatz & Moore,
2002, Sorensen, 1999.
(8) Nahaouet & Ghoshal, 1998.
(9) Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for making this point.
(10) Tsai & Ghoshal, 1998.
(11) Nahapiet & Goshal, 1998
(12) Baron, Burton & Hannan, 1996; Chattopadhay, Glick, Miller &
George, 1999.
(13) Adler & Kwon, 2002
(14) Beckman & Haunschild, 2002
(15) Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004; Katila & Ahuja, 2002; Tushman & O’
Reilly, 1996.
(16) Levinthal, 1997.
(17) Ruef, Aldrich & Carter, 2003.

Q&A: Teaching Strategic Innovation

admin — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:51:00 GMT

Gary Lindblad, assistant dean and director of the MBA program, spoke with three professors on how the Merage School’s teaching method, stressing strategic innovation, distinguishes it from other business schools. Lindblad talked with Vijay Gurbaxani, senior associate dean for academic affairs and professor of information technology; Mort Pincus, professor of accounting; and Christine Beckman, associate professor of organization and strategy.

Q. Lindblad: How did the Merage School’s thematic approach of business education come about, and how did you decide on the themes of strategic innovation, information technology and analytic decision making?

A. Gurbaxani: Based on our knowledge of what drivers affect business today, we did a lot of research with senior executives, alumni and current students. We found key drivers that essentially enable companies to deliver and manage sustainable, profitable growth.

We identified strategic innovation because that’s what companies in developed countries must focus on in the global economy. Information technology is an enabler of innovation and allows workers to be much more productive and, therefore, more competitive at a higher wage level. However, information technology has made much more data and information available, and managers struggle with how to manage all this information. Our focus on analytic decision making derives from the availability of vast amounts of information.

Pincus: Our accounting courses worry about the volume of information. In my particular area of external financial reporting, we’re trying to understand how companies measure and communicate their activities, including their innovation, their growth plans and their productivity enhancements.

But we must do it in a way so we understand managers’ incentives for reporting and the discretion they have over measuring these activities. And we must do it in a way that conveys what they’re trying to do without giving away proprietary information. It’s a real challenge with all this information available, or being demanded on what a company is doing, while at the same time letting people know what the company is trying to do.

Gurbaxani: Right. It used to be that companies would take two or three months to close their books, then it reduced to a week, and now they may need to do it in 24 hours or less to be successful. It really speaks to the value of information technology. Since we have more pertinent information immediately available, decision making gets better and reflects the state of the business as up-to-date and accurately as possible.

Gurbaxani: So you focus much more on the decision making and much less on the information gathering.

Q. Lindblad: Why is it important that our MBAs develop their own point of view on the changes these influences are making on business today?

A. Gurbaxani: Business has moved from what I would call a fairly steady planning-oriented world, maybe a decade or so ago, to a much more rapidly evolving world. Many of the lessons of the past may or may not apply to the future. So, understanding how to react to these discontinuities is really crucial.

Pincus: The rate of change is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime, and it seems only to be increasing. We’re trying to get MBA students to think rigorously, analytically, globally, strategically—and to be very flexible and deal with change.

Beckman: I think of analytic decisionmaking as knowing how to approach a problem, the questions that you need to ask, data that you need to collect and how you want to analyze it. It’s not a specific solution that we’re teaching, it’s a way of approaching a problem and thinking about a problem.

Q. Lindblad: How does this get incorporated into the classroom?

A. Pincus: In my financial accounting course, our perspective is looking at the company as a whole. Right away, most issues are strategic and big picture. Then we can drill down. So it’s not an accounting course per se, it’s an MBA course that teaches some accounting along the way.

As opposed to focusing primarily on teaching someone to be an accountant, we’re teaching the ability to talk to your accountant and understand what he or she is doing. And we’re teaching students how to communicate with other managers either in or outside the company about specific issues such as debt or equity, inventories or investments, stocks, bonds—a whole vocabulary of things.

Before they walk the walk, they’ve got to be able to talk the talk. We’re giving them that talk.

Beckman: A lot of innovation comes from diverse teams expressing different perspectives and encouraging you to think differently. It’s an important part of analytic decision making because you have to be able to defend your position, you have to come up with solutions as a group. That’s a big part of my organizational behavior class—teaching people to make decisions together, where students encourage fellow students to be more creative and more innovative in their solutions.

Gurbaxani: And if you think about the modern organization, teams become particularly important because they’re how innovation occurs. Often these aren’t just single-company teams, but they’re diverse teams from multiple corporations and multiple countries. How you foster innovation, build trust and work are critical.

Beckman: Yes, because the work is happening in a distributed fashion, say, in India, China and here. You’re managing people in three different countries in different time zones. It’s only when everybody’s working together that you end up with an innovative product or service design.

Q. Lindblad: Why is The Paul Merage School of Business a great place for students to grapple with these issues?

A. Gurbaxani: We're one of the very few business schools that confronts head-on the changes that the business world is experiencing. Many business schools continue to offer the traditional curriculum and we, by virtue of being in California – a hightech gateway to the Pacific and the world – deal with these issues much more squarely. The companies that surround us bring these issues to our attention frequently. The faculty here has always been thinking about these issues and being smaller, we’re able to deal with change more easily than some of our traditional competitors.

Beckman: The case studies we choose are very important in distinguishing the school. We pick up on the school’s themes in these cases. In my class, we discuss two cases on innovation. We talk about the organizational structures, reward systems that promote innovation and how technology changes management. We talk about how companies like eBay grew over time and how it’s sustaining growth.

The case studies are really an important way of learning, a way to develop analytic skills, because you’re trying to take all the data and come up with an assessment about how a company got to this point and where they need to go from here.

Gurbaxani: That's right. Everybody can say they do case studies, but our case selection is based on what we believe is important, and that helps define a particular direction for the Merage School. Our focus happens both inside and outside the classroom.

Managing for Breakthroughs in Productivity

admin — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:34:00 GMT

In this working paper, Allan Scherr discusses how to create and manage projects to achieve results beyond what could have been reasonably expected beforehand. He argues ordinary people can achieve breakthrough results and shows how this process can increase success rate and quality of selected projects.

Source: Allan Scherr
Link: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=655822

A model for CIO led Innovation at IBM

admin — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:11:00 GMT

The article covers the collaborative innovation process at IBM and how it has increased the innovation effectiveness at IBM. A case study of four collaborative tools is as presented.

Source: D.L.Newbold,M.C.Azua
Link: IBM systems journal