Short Programs

From Technology to Innovation: Putting Ideas to Work [17.50s]

Date: July 12-15, 2010 | Tuition: $3,600 | Continuing Education Units (CEUs): 2.3

Comments from Previous Participants  |  Overview  |  Outline of the Program  |  Learning Objectives  |  Schedule  |  Who Should Attend  |  On-Site Courses  |  About the Program Faculty  |  Updates

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Comments from Previous Participants

“This course is essential for anyone assigned the daunting task of implementing technology innovation in their business or organization.”
- Jill Pate, Raytheon

“This course went to the heart of creating innovation within organizations. Any institution would benefit from a thorough understanding of the complexities involved; they are presented in this program by experts who have witnessed and managed these complexities first-hand.” - Stephen F. Bush, GE Global Research

“The course had a very high impact on me and my organization. You showed us how we can learn from innovation and early prototyping. It was an experience I won't forget.” - Luis Pallares, ADDhoc (software, Barcelona)

“I liked the diversity of examples pointing out different aspects of the problem; and the mix of private / public organizations, and in particular the interplay among them. I have already recommended the course to my colleagues.”
- Paris Genalis, Office of the Secretary of Defense

Other typical participants came from Amgen, Sony, Lockheed Martin, 3M, BP Amoco, Novartis, the BBC Chrysler, DuPont, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and numerous military labs, Capital One, Michelin, Los Alamos National Lab, Siemens, Kodak, United Technologies, MITRE, Honda, CIA, Starbucks, and firms, government agencies, and universities in Europe, South America, and Japan.

Overview

Both public and private organizations are concerned about keeping pace with a fast shifting environment. While this requires constant efforts at innovation, the failure rate of these innovations is high. Many innovations fail to take root at all. Others are not sustained over the long term. Why are some successful and others not? What are the strategies employed by the success stories? Are they primarily an exploitation of a comparative technological advantage, superior economic resources, or organizational adaptability?

Even the most technology driven innovations require organizational change. Successful organizational change, in turn, requires both technical vision and political coalition-building strategies. This course will describe how successful organizational entrepreneurs build teams that balance technical and political competence. We will examine in detail cases of successful innovations, and those where the innovation failed or was not sustained.

How do successful entrepreneurs guide their organizations through the process of innovation? What are the motivations for innovation? What are the barriers? Are the incentives and barriers primarily: (1) internal to the organization or arising from external sources; (2) economic or technological in origin; (3) a function of competitive pressures or of technological imperatives?

Alternatively, is success or failure due to the characteristics, structures, internal incentives and processes of the organization that must implement the innovation? What are the strategies available for coalition building within organizations? How do individual incentives mesh with reframing, goal enlargement, and group solidarity?

In evaluating organizational innovation strategies, there are obvious differences between public and private sector organizations. Yet while the incentives are often very different, the underlying processes of innovation are very similar in the two sectors. We are particularly interested in public - private interactions. Successful innovation strategies in the private sector often involve effective exploitation of public organizations, while public innovation usually requires mobilization of support from the private sector.

Outline of the Program

Monday AM:

The Innovation Process: Alternative Conceptions/ Introductory Case
There are at least three competing concepts of the organizational requirements for effective innovation. One stresses the role of senior executives who grasp the need for change, discover an innovation to meet the need, and motivate their organization to follow their lead. A second conception focuses on the evolutionary development of new technologies at the lower levels of the organization, with the struggle being to capture the support of the senior executives. A third conception stresses the role of competition within the organization, between divisions or bureaus, to provide the necessary incentives for innovation to take place. Are these theories mutually exclusive? Do they depend on a particular bureaucratic context? What are they leaving out?

Monday PM:

Innovation in the Private Sector
What is distinctive about innovation in the private sector? Why are some firms more innovative than others? How should we distinguish between invention, innovation, and transformation? What do economic and industrial organization theories tell us about these processes, and what don't they explain?

Tuesday AM:

S(t)imulating Innovation
As digital technologies for modeling and simulation offer more value for less money, they provoke fundamental challenges to organizational culture and design. Increasingly, digital models and prototypes are key platforms for managing risk and creating value. They allow for cost-effective creativity, encourage profitable improvisation, and inspire organizations to collaborate in unexpected ways. Thus innovative prototyping styles help generate innovative teams. What is the relationship between how leading innovators model reality and how they actually manage it? How do we explain prototyping failures compared with prototyping successes?

Tuesday PM:

Lean Design as an Innovation
Lean design evolved at Toyota as a new set of arrangements for managing technical change. It now includes a complex web of organizational interrelationships. Why did this system evolve at Toyota instead of GM? Can it be transplanted effectively to other organizations? What happens when it meets a strong existing organizational culture (e.g. Pratt and Whitney)? If only part of the new system is accepted, will any of it be effective?

Wednesday AM:

Corporate Strategies for Reshaping Their Environment
Sophisticated entrepreneurs find that changing public regulatory policy is the key to getting new technology accepted. DuPont had substitutes for CFC's which were too expensive to market until CFC's were phased out. Makowski and Company foresaw natural gas-fired power plants in New England if Canadian and U.S. regulations were reshaped. How did these companies envision the new opportunities? How did they form coalitions to influence public policy?

Wednesday PM:

Public Strategies for Reshaping Markets
In the last decade regulators have also tried to influence the performance of corporations by reshaping markets. Has public policy in telecommunications been leading technology or following it? Is telecommunications an appropriate model for the electric power industry? Are the economics and technology really parallel? How will shareholders and consumers share the gains? Will the pace of technical change rise or fall?

Thursday AM:

The Politics of Innovation: Creating HDTV
The development path for High Definition Television has been extremely complex. A vigorous competition among the companies produced far more advanced system designs than anyone expected at the start. Yet this competition was created and managed by Federal regulators. In the next phase though, the regulators forced a Grand Alliance among all the competitors. Formal cooperation however did not end their rivalries. Throughout this process, technical choices and successes depended on the shifting private and public coalitions. Does this case represent the future for high technology innovations?

Thursday PM:

Political Strategies for Organizational Change
What strategies do successful innovators use to build coalitions within and across organizations? How are individual incentives offered and exploited? How are the issues framed? How are goals defined, enlarged or altered over time? How is coalition solidarity maintained?

Learning Objectives

• Examine the relationship between how leading innovators model reality and how they actually manage it, and prototyping failures compared with prototyping successes.
• Analyze Toyota’s new model for managing technical change, and discuss whether it could be transplanted effectively to other organizations.
• Investigate the complex development path for High Definition Television, and the competition that produced more advanced designs than expected.

Course schedule and registration times

Class runs 9:00 am - 5:00 pm every day except Thursday when it ends at
4:00 pm. There will be a dinner for course participants and faculty on the first evening.

Registration is on Monday morning at 8:30 am.

Hotels located on the east side of the MIT campus, within walking distance of the course location are: The Kendall Hotel, Cambridge Boston Marriott, and Cambridge Center Residence Inn. Hotels within a short cab ride are: Royal Sonesta Hotel, Hyatt Regency Cambridge, and Le Méridien Cambridge. Please see our Accommodations page for more information.

Who Should Attend

Private and public managers, consultants, and academics who are working to promote and sustain innovations.

On-site Courses

We can also offer this course for groups of employees at your location. Please contact the Short Programs office for further details.

About the Program Faculty

All of the seminar leaders are MIT faculty or research associates. Several have also had extensive experience in government and the corporate sector, and all have published extensively on the topics of organizational change and innovation.

Paul F. Levy is President of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Previously he was Professor of Urban Studies at MIT, where he was actively involved in the restructuring of the electric power and telecommunications industries. Levy has also been Chairman of the Massachusetts Public Utilities Commission and Executive Director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, where he managed the $4 billion cleanup of Boston Harbor.

Lee McKnight is an Associate Professor in the School of Information Studies, Syracuse University;  a Research Affiliate of the Program on Internet and Telecoms Convergence at MIT; and President of Marengo Research, a consultancy. His writing, research interests and consulting span policy, economic, business and technical aspects of the emerging global information economy. He is co-editor of Internet Services. Quality of Service in Grids, Networks, and Markets, MIT Press, 2004. For more information:
http://istweb.syr.edu/facstaff/facultymember.asp?id=355

Harvey M. Sapolsky is Professor of Public Policy and Organization, and Director of the Security Studies Program. He is a long-time specialist on innovation in the defense and health and communications sectors, and is now studying the restructuring of the defense industry. For more information: http://web.mit.edu/ssp/faculty_sapolsky.html

Michael Schrage is co-director of the MIT Media Lab's E-Markets Initiative, and a Merrill Lynch Forum Innovation Fellow. His ongoing work explores the cultures of modeling and simulation in innovation management. Serious Play, his book about the economics and ethnology of prototyping, was recently published by the Harvard Business School Press. He writes the fortnightly “Brave New Work” column for Fortune magazine and is on the editorial board of the Sloan Management Review. For more information: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/.

Sanford L. Weiner, a Research Associate at the Center for International Studies, is a policy analyst who has focused on technology and organizational change in the chemical, health and defense industries. He is now working on the public health responses to pandemic flu, and the changing environment for innovation in the Defense Department. For more information: http://web.mit.edu/ssp/people/weiner/affil_weiner.html

James P. Womack is co-author of the best selling The Machine That Changed The World, which examined Toyota's lean design system. His Lean Enterprise Institute now works with a wide range of other corporations seeking to implement these ideas. For more information: http://www.lean.org/WhoWeAre/LeanPerson.cfm?LeanPersonId=1

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