Fostering Innovation Across Structures

Overview

Lecture explores innovation’s meaning, learning from failure, systematic innovation, intrapreneurship, and crowdsourcing to drive new value.

Innovation: Creating New or Different Value

• Innovation makes meaningful contributions via new, different, or combined value.
• Airbnb created new value: booking space in others’ homes via phone, reshaping lodging.
• Four Seasons emphasized exceptional service, creating differentiated value within hotels.
• Booking platforms bundle hotels with events and car rentals, combining resources for value.
• Innovations can be new offerings or new combinations in existing spaces.

Learning from Innovative Failure

• Failures can spark innovations when viewed differently and repurposed.
• Cornflakes emerged from rolled bread left too long, curling into flakes.
• Post-it Notes’ weak adhesive was a failed strong glue, later perfect for reusable notes.
• Organizations can design “purposeful accidents” to enable serendipitous ideas.

Purposeful Accidents by Design

• Physical spaces can be designed to create beneficial chance encounters.
• Lillis building layout (atrium, openness) forces cross-path interactions among roles.
• Apple and Google campuses similarly designed to increase collisions and conversations.
• Example: Instructor co-created a new BA 101 through office proximity fostering collaboration.

Systematic Innovation

• Defined as purposeful, organized search for changes and analysis of opportunities they offer.
• Firms like Microsoft, Apple, and Intel compete to out-innovate with next big breakthroughs.
• Successful innovations often exploit change in economic or social contexts.

Intrapreneurship (Entrepreneurship Inside Organizations)

• Applying an entrepreneurial mindset within established organizations to spur innovation.
• Intrapreneurs focus on creativity and innovation while operating within systems.
• Large firms face bureaucracy; they create spaces to enable entrepreneurial risk-taking.
• Example: Intel selects entrepreneurial staff, funds them in off-campus workspaces to think big.

Crowdsourcing for Ideas

• Crowdsourcing obtains ideas directly from customers to overcome internal constraints.
• Organizations solicit proposals and votes online to guide new offerings.
• Example approach: run contests for product flavors; make winners customers selected.

Key Terms & Definitions

• Innovation: Making meaningful contributions through new, different, or combined value.
• Purposeful accidents: Designed conditions that increase chance encounters yielding ideas.
• Systematic innovation: Purposeful, organized search for change and analysis of opportunities.
• Intrapreneurship: Entrepreneurial activity within an established organization.
• Crowdsourcing: Gathering ideas or decisions from a large external group, often customers.

Structured Summary

Action Items / Next Steps

• Design environments and processes to foster purposeful accidents and cross-functional collisions.
• Establish intrapreneur teams with autonomy, budget, and separate spaces to think big.
• Implement crowdsourcing programs to gather, vet, and select customer-driven ideas.
• Regularly conduct systematic scans for changes and analyze opportunity implications.