Vulcan - Leading with Innovation: Program Resources

L EADING WITH I NNOVATION : P ROGRAM R ESOURCES Spring 2019

Unit 1: Innovation Basics Faculty: Dr. Al Segars

Introduction: Three aspects to define innovation: • Innovation as an outcome. • Innovation as a process. • Building an innovation tribe.

What is Innovation? • What have you seen that did NOT result in innovation? The Messiah Model is the idea that one person has a great idea to solve for innovation. • Innovation can be described as several people collaborating in a community to create great ideas. Innovation can be an accident. Innovation can be something new, novel and unique. Will need Leadership to pull people together for innovative ideas. • Example: Innovation of the banjo. Innovation as an Outcome: • Define the outcome for a project. There must be a goal line and a purpose. • Build a compelling vision. • Consistent recognition of unique opportunity. Innovation needs to happen all the time. Recognize innovation to lead, not follow, competitors. Find new opportunities (where, how, evaluate risk).

Innovation as a Process: • Give innovation boundaries. Example: Football field with no lines or goals. • Herb Simon and How We Make Decisions: o Intelligence. Gather, organize, distribute. o Design. What is possible? o Choice. Investing time and effort.

Building an Innovation Tribe: • Build a tribal aspect of a team with a greater purpose . • Tribes are built on:

o Ambition & winning o Driven by process o Powered by teams o Patience & perseverance o Guided by analytics o Always “on the march”

Unit 2: Intelligence Faculty: Dr. Al Segars

Introduction: Intelligence gathering for innovation.

• Interpreting analytics, statistics and numbers. • Intelligence gathering leads to new ideas. • Turn innovation into stories, process and products or experiences. Divergent vs. Convergent Thinking: • Convergent thinking is seeing facts, figures and information then fitting it into our own biases and our own world-view. This can get in the way of innovation. • Divergent thinking is asking yourself “what is possible” and escaping your own biases. • Example: Disney and Apple.

Storytelling: • Storytelling, or building a narrative, gives us context, it captures a moment in time in a story format. • Example: Disney, Apple iPod, Methodist church.

Process of Narrative Building: A technique or tool to understand what the future may hold. • Develop a question of interest. Needs to be a challenging question using data. Create clarity, challenge assumptions, see things in a new way, encourage critical thinking. • Choose two broad dimensions that frame possible solutions space. • These dimensions should not be too closely related. Example: Customers and products. • Frame the dimensions as extremes. • Develop learning narratives. • Develop trajectories, solutions, and impact. • Present the narratives as a “pro” or “con.” Understand the viability or the appeal of each narrative. • Storytelling and Analytics should be “married” to develop a strategy. Innovation is for Everyone: Even if your organization has history or success (the enemies of change), the organization can still be innovative. There’s always room for more innovation.

Insights: Narrative building: • Provides a context for our product or service. • Allows us to define a strategy. • Guides us to innovative outcomes.

Unit 3: Design Faculty: Dr. Al Segars

Introduction: • Design is key in building the desired outcome. • Design is how we make choices. • Design is linking market outcomes with our initiatives. • Example: The Wright Brothers. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Wright Brothers and the Circle of Design:

Driving Forces of Innovation: • Intention • Planning • Know How • Luck and mental connections • Serendipity & chance • Economics: Projects don’t always need more money; less money and less distraction means more focus • Role of Science: resolve, method, theory, testing and metrics

Insights: • Design is critical in the process of innovation. • Align initiatives towards a useful and purposeful outcome. • Utilize the Circle of Design.

Unit 4: Risk and Choice Faculty: Dr. Al Segars

Introduction: • Choice is how we spend money, time and effort investing in innovation. If an organization can’t invest in new ideas, they may lose major opportunities. • Risk is an element that accompanies choice when you embark on something new. • Turn innovation into stories, process, products or experiences. Chain of Logic: • Chain of Logic is a set of initiatives within an organization that are driving towards some market outcome. • Chain of Logic is what the organization is doing, investing in, how it operates to reach a market outcome.

Importance of Defining Analytics: • Interpretation of combinations of statistics and numbers that provide more information together than by themselves. • Portfolio of Analytics: things we collect and things we rely on. Control and Slack in Managing Innovation: • The goal of manage through control and slack (the S-curve ) is that we take a technology and make sure that we use it to its full effect. The S-curve of innovation is a project risk perspective. • Example: Apple. Making Investment Decisions: Lots of risk involved in the innovation game. • Think logically about investment decisions. • Take money from an old investment and put it towards a new investment. • A tool your organization can use to make investment decisions is the Opportunity Matrix . • Example: Premium beer in the Opportunity Matrix. Falling stars vs. rising stars.

Unit 5: Seven Technologies Changing the World Faculty: Dr. Al Segars

Introduction: “Seven technologies changing the world” is research from a collection of organizations / companies to discuss new technology that would be life changing. • This research team identified four large dimensions of life that will be radically impacted by new technology. o Health - preventing illness vs. treating illness. o Commerce – customization of products. o Environment – allow the environment to speak to us through technology and take action. o Learning – machine learning that will help us locate information quickly and efficiently.

Seven Classes of Technology: • Pervasive computing • Wireless mesh networks • Biotechnology • 3D printing • Nanotechnology • Big data / Machine learning • Advanced robotics

Super Technologies: • Super technologies will lift increase the stakes in terms of impact. • Can combine technologies together to create super technologies. o Example: Biotechnology combined with 3D printing. • Super technologies will be challenging to leaders as multiple forms of technology will collide with each other.

Unit 6: Reactive Innovation: Leading in a Crisis Faculty: Dr. Al Segars

Introduction: What happens when a routine project becomes extraordinary?

• Projects can turn into a crisis. • Example: Apollo 13 Space Flight.

Apollo 13 Example

Three Dimensions of Risk: • Three dimensions can help categorize the riskiness of any project: o Structure o Experience o Scope • The team works to bring structure to the problem. • Reduce the scope by breaking the project down into pieces.

• Gather new technical know-how. • Don’t manage all projects equally. • Turn high-risk projects into low-risk ones.

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