Building, Leading, and Sustaining the Innovative Organization

This course outlines the steps that need to be taken to implement and manage a culture of innovation. Structured around a four-part framework developed at MIT for leading and organizing breakthrough innovation, the program helps participants better understand how to develop sources of information on current and new technologies and consumer needs.

This program is designed to help organizations change how they approach new product and service developments to encourage rather than inhibit innovation. Too often the culture, structure, and organizational processes that promote efficient short-term developments make innovation very difficult to introduce. Drawing on over five decades of MIT research on innovation, the program will provide participants proven tools, concepts, and frameworks that will enable them to responsibly identify and commercialize the innovative products and services needed to survive and grow in the face of changing markets, technologies, and consumer demand.

Specifically, participants will be presented with:

• Tactics for dealing with the uncertainty, risk-taking, and the internal politics and resistances to change that can threaten innovation initiatives and early-stage developments
• Ways to address common misperceptions about innovation that stifle your ability to quickly respond to a rapidly changing competitive landscape
• Modifications to existing development processes that will make them more innovative friendly, from anticipating customer problems and enabling technologies, to creating roadmaps, to developing the innovative offerings needed to remain competitive
• Identifying the critical roles needed for moving, selling, and marshaling innovation through your functioning organization

TAKEAWAYS

This course outlines the concepts and steps required to lead and implement a culture that fosters innovation. Structured around a 3-pillar framework developed for leading and organizing innovative activities, the program helps participants better understand how to identify the means by which organizations can overcome complacency and improve their marketing/technology interfaces for enhancing their innovative strategies.

Participants will learn about the options available for driving strategic innovation in the organization, including how to:

• Combine the right mix of capabilities and critical functions to generate and commercialize innovative ideas more efficiently
• Develop the processes and required to support these activities
• Build cultures that encourage innovative behaviors
• Overcome the six misconceptions that stymie innovation in order to help the organization identify process information, identify opportunities, and deal with risk and uncertainty in a more timely manner

Sample Schedule—Subject to Change

DAY 1 SAMPLE

• 7:45 AM - 8:30 AM Registration and continental breakfast
• 8:30 AM - 10:15 AM The challenges of innovation: Why organizations have difficulties building, leading, and sustaining innovation
• 10:30 AM - 12:15 PM The challenges of innovation: Some innovation patterns and coping with uncertainty and resistance
• 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM Networking lunch
• 1:15 PM - 2:30 PM Misperceptions that inhibit an organizations ability to innovate: The nature of innovation and how ideas fit in
• 2:40 PM - 4:00 PM Misperceptions (cont.): Dealing with risk and uncertainty
• 4:10 PM - 5:00 PM Misperceptions (cont.): Making decisions and rewarding success when uncertainty is high
• 5:00 PM - 5:30 PM Review of first day (key learnings and takeaways) and overview of day two
• 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM Networking reception

DAY 2 SAMPLE

• 7:45 AM - 8:30 AM Continental breakfast
• 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM Adapting development processes to be innovation friendly: Anticipating the future: customer needs and emerging technologies
• 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM Adapting development processes to be innovation friendly: Building roadmaps to innovative futures
• 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Networking lunch
• 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM Leading and sustaining innovative activities: Examining critical roles and marshaling events within innovative entrepreneurial teams
• 2:45 PM - 4:00 PM Leading and sustaining innovative activities: Examining and comparing critical success factors for new and existing product lines
• 4:00 PM - 4:30 PM Summary, review, and key takeaways