How organizations kill innovation
without even trying and what you can do to help
This two-day executive program in innovation management introduces
participants to the most common (and unconscious) barriers to innovation in
modern business organizations. The
program introduces a framework that enables participants to easily identify and
analyze the most common barriers to creativity and innovation, and then
provides participants with a hands-on exposure to tool-set of established
practices that will enable them, not only to foster and improve the creativity
of individuals, but also to improve the rate and quality of innovation in the
groups and organizations in which they work.
DATES:
December 14-15, 2009
COST:
$1,800
Includes tuition, books, instructional materials, continental breakfast, and lunch.
REGISTRATION:
Register online >
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
The
Problem: To survive
and succeed, firms need to constantly seek new ideas and approaches in order to
advance the state of the art, do more with fewer resources, and better serve
their missions. Unfortunately,
accessing the best tool for the job – namely a great idea – is till one of the toughest
challenges in an organizational environment.It is extremely difficult to win over staff, peers,
managers, and boards – not to mention customers – with the result that powerful
new ideas get stuck or killed, often before they’ve been evaluated or even
articulated.This is especially
true in times like these where there is so little time, money, or appetite for
experimentation or risk.
The
Solution: This
program shows participants how to identify and eliminate those common
constraints that stand in the way of bringing new ideas to life.While we cannot necessarily make people
creative, we can certainly stop them from indiscriminately killing
innovation.Only then can firms
begin to articulate an “innovation strategy" that will have as its goal to
1) encourage individual behaviors that generate new ideas and new
opportunities, 2) to create a mechanism for fairly and realistically assessing
the promise (and potential risks) of new ideas and 3) to develop an
environment that routinely and constantly evaluates, tests, and then implements
great ideas.
Program
Outline: More workshop than class, this highly interactive and dynamic program will challenge
participants to rigorously evaluate themselves, their groups, and their organizations
in an effort to diagnose innovation constraints, and then offer a structured and
tested processes for generating, evaluating, and implementing ideas.
- The
Context of Innovation:An innovation
process model
- Creativity
and Individual Constraints:How
individuals can generate better ideas
- Ideas in Groups:Managing emotion, culture, and
interpersonal behaviors that stifle innovation
- Organizational
Innovation:How size,
structure, and strategy will support (or hinder)
- Evolution
in Industries:Disruptive
technologies and the role of competition
- Tradition,
Risk, and Societal Change:Culture, Demographics, and other social controls
- The Innovation Process: A systematic process for working in teams and firms
FORMAT:
Two-day program
Class runs from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Owen Graduate School of Management, unless otherwise noted.
INSTRUCTOR:
Professor David A. Owens serves on the faculty at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management. Specializing in strategy, innovation and product development, Owens also delivers executive education programs and consulting services to a wide range of clients around the world. Owens’ research has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, London Guardian and San Jose Mercury News, as well as on NPR’s Marketplace. A dynamic educator, Professor Owens consistently receives top teaching ratings and awards from students in his executive programs and at Vanderbilt University.
His prior education and consulting work in the area of business strategy, innovation process and product development have included engagements with NASA, LEGO, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Gibson Music, Sygen International, OrangeUK, Alcatel, Tetra Pak, and the Tennessee Valley Authority among others. He has also performed product design consulting work for a variety of firms including Daimler Benz, Apple Computer, Coleman Camping, Corning World Kitchen, Steelcase and IDEO. Most recently, while on leave from Vanderbilt University, Owens served as CEO of Griffin Technology Inc., the largest consumer electronics firm in the MP3/iPod accessory market space.
Owens earned his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management through a joint fellowship program between the Graduate School of Business and the School of Engineering at Stanford University. He also holds an M.S. in Engineering Product Design and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford.
