ADMN 415 v3 and v4: Strategy and Technology Innovation Report a Broken Link
Lesson 1
| Anderson, J., & Markides, C . (2007). Strategic innovation at the base of the pyramid. MIT Sloan Management Review. Although there has been a burst of interest in recent years in how economic growth is unfolding in the developing world, most of the research on strategic innovation is focused on developed markets. However, based on our research, companies that understand the dynamics of growth at the base of the economic pyramid in emerging markets have significant opportunities to unlock value. |
Lesson 2
| Supplementary Readings |
| Amabile, T. M. (2008). Creativity and the role of the leader. Harvard Business Review. In today's innovation-driven economy, understanding how to generate great ideas has become an urgent managerial priority. Suddenly, the spotlight has turned on the academics who've studied creativity for decades. How relevant is their research to the practical challenges leaders face? To connect theory and practice, Harvard Business School professors Amabile and Khaire convened a two-day colloquium of leading creativity scholars and executives from companies such as Google, IDEO, Novartis, Intuit, and E Ink. In this article, the authors present highlights of the research presented and the discussion of its implications. |
| Huber. F. (2012). Do clusters really matter for innovaton practices in Information Technology? Questioning the significance of technological knowledge spillovers. Journal of Economic Geography. A widespread assumption in economic geography and the economics of innovation is that firms located in clusters benefit from territorial learning and knowledge spillovers. However, it remains unclear to what extent these benefits actually occur. This article aims to address this issue and examines to what extent research and development workers in the Cambridge Information Technology Cluster benefit from being located in the Cluster. The study shows why many do not believe that their work benefits from being located in the Cluster. The results suggest that academics as well as policy makers need to be more careful with the assumption of technological knowledge spillovers in innovative clusters. The significant advantages of the Cambridge IT Cluster seem to be of a different nature; in particular they concern labour market advantages and benefits from the global ‘brand’ of Cambridge. |
Lesson 3
| Johnson, M. W., Christensen, C. M., & Kagermann, H. (2008). Reinventing your business model. Harvard Business Review. Why is it so difficult for established companies to pull off the new growth that business model innovation can bring? Here's why: They don't understand their current business model well enough to know if it would suit a new opportunity or hinder it, and they don't know how to build a new model when they need it. Drawing on their vast knowledge of disruptive innovation and experience in helping established companies capture game-changing opportunities, consultant Johnson, Harvard Business School professor Christensen, and SAP co-CEO Kagermann set out the tools that executives need to do both. |
| Supplementary Readings |
| Anderson, P., & Tushman, M. L. (1990). Technological discontinuities and dominant designs: A cyclic model of technological change. Administrative Science Quarterly. An evolutionary model of technological change is proposed in which a technological breakthrough, or discontinuity, initiates an era of intense technical variation and selection, culminating in a single dominant design. This era of ferment is followed by a period of incremental technical progress, which may be broken by a subsequent technological discontinuity. A longitudinal study of the cement (1888-1980), glass (1893-1980), and minicomputer (1958-1982) industries indicates that when patents are not a significant factor, a technological discontinuity is generally followed by a single standard. |
| Adomavicius, G., Bockstedt, J. C., Gupta A., & Kauffman, R. J. (2007). Technology roles and paths of influence in an ecosystem model of technology evolution. Information Technology Management. We propose a new conceptual model for understanding technology evolution that highlights dynamic and highly interdependent relationships among multiple technologies. We argue that, instead of considering technologies in isolation, technology evolution is best viewed as a dynamic system or ecosystem that includes a variety of interrelated technologies. |
| Nagji, B., & Tuff, G. (2012). Managing your innovation portfolio. Harvard Business Review. For many companies, innovation is a sprawling collection of initiatives, energetic but uncoordinated, and managed with vacillating strategies. For steady, above-average returns, firms need a balanced innovation portfolio and the ability to approach it as an integrated whole. Having studied companies in the industrial, technology, and consumer goods sectors, the authors found a striking pattern: Outperforming firms typically allocate about 70% of their innovation resources to core offerings, 20% to adjacent efforts, and 10% to transformational initiatives. As it happens, returns from innovation investments tend to follow an inverse ratio, with 70% coming from the transformational realm.The ideal balance will differ from industry to industry and company to company, but one thing is constant: Companies must execute at all three levels of ambition and manage total innovation deliberately and closely. In particular, they must develop the unique capacities needed for transformational innovation.This means finding the talent required for breakthrough effort sand ensuring enough separation from the core business; creating an appropriate (and often very different) funding structure; departing from a pipeline management approach; and using noneconomic and internal metrics to assess early efforts. Companies that learn how to manage for total innovation can fully harness innovation's energy and make it a reliable driver of growth. |
Lesson 4
| Suarez, F. F. (2004). Battles for technological dominance: An integrative framework. Research Policy. This paper proposes an integrative framework for understanding the process by which a technology achieves dominance when “battling” against other technological designs. We focus on describing the different stages of a dominance battle and propose five battle milestones that in turn define five key phases in the process. We review the literature from several disciplines to identify the key firm- and environment-level factors that affect the outcome of a technology battle and posit that the relative importance of each factor will vary depending on the phase considered. Our framework complements and extends existing literature and has implications both for theory and for management practice. |
Lesson 5
| Supplementary Readings |
| Suarez, F., & Lanzolla, G. (2005). The half-truth of first-mover advantage. Harvard Business Review. Many executives take for granted that the first company in a new product category gets an unbeatable head start and reaps long-lasting benefits. But that doesn't always happen. The authors of this article discovered that much depends on the pace at which the category's technology is changing and the speed at which the market is evolving. By analyzing these two factors, companies can improve their odds of succeeding as first movers with the resources they possess. Gradual evolution in both the technology and the market provides a first mover with the best conditions for creating a dominant position that is long lasting (Hoover in the vacuum cleaner industry is a good example). In such calm waters, a company can defend its advantages even without exceptional skills or extensive financial resources. When the market is changing rapidly and the product isn't, a first entrant with extensive resources can obtain a long-lasting advantage (as Sony did with its Walkman personal stereo); a company with only limited resources probably must settle for a short-term benefit. When the market is static but the product is changing constantly, first-mover advantages of either kind--durable or short-lived--are unlikely. Only companies with very deep pockets can survive (think of Sony and the digital cameras it pioneered). Rapid churn in both the technology and the market creates the worst conditions. But if companies have an acute sense of when to exit -- as Netscape demonstrated when it agreed to be acquired by AOL--a worthwhile short-term gain is possible. Before venturing into a newly forming market, you need to analyze the environment, assess your resources, then determine which type of first-mover advantage is most achievable. Once you've gone into the water, you have no choice but to swim. |
Lesson 6
| Supplementary Readings |
| Hamel, G., & Prahalad, C. K. (1989). Strategic intent. Harvard Business Review. In the early 1970s when Canon took its first halting steps in reprographics, the idea of a fledgling Japanese company challenging Xerox seemed preposterous. Fifteen years later, it matched the U.S. giant in global unit market share. The basis for Canon's success? A different approach to making strategy--an approach that emphasizes an organization's resourcefulness more than the resources it currently controls. Familiar techniques like portfolio planning and competitor analysis lead to strategies that rivals can easily decode. The sum total is a pathology of surrender that leads many managers to abandon businesses instead of building them. Canon and other world-class competitors make strategy in a different way: on the basis of strategic intent. The result is a global leadership position and an approach to competition that has reduced larger, stronger Western rivals to an endless game of catch-up ball. |
| Prahalad, C. K., & Hamel, G. (1990). The core competence of the corporation. Harvard Business Review. In the early 1980s, GTE was positioned to become a major player in the information technology industry. NEC was much smaller and had no experience as an operating telecommunications company. Today NEC is among the top five companies in telecommunications, semiconductors, and mainframes. GTE has become essentially a telephone company with a position in defense and lighting products. What happened? |
Lesson 7
| Supplementary Readings |
| Yu, O. (2008). Application of real options analysis to technology portfolio planning: A case study. The International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management. The concepts of real options analysis, which transfer options analysis for financial investments to those involving real properties, such as land and plant facilities, have already existed for 30 years. However, the actual application of real options analysis to technology portfolio planning has not been as widespread as expected. Among others, a major barrier to such applications appears to be a lack of appreciation and acceptance of real options by technology executives. However, the experience in the case study provides successful approaches for overcoming these barriers. |
Lesson 8
| Supplementary Readings |
| Ibarra, H., & Hansen, M. (2011). Are you a collaborative leader? Harvard Business Review. Social media and technologies have put connectivity on steroids and made collaboration more integral to business than ever. But without the right leadership, collaboration can go astray. Employees who try to collaborate on everything may wind up stuck in endless meetings, struggling to reach agreement. On the other side of the coin, executives who came of age during the heyday of "command and control" management can have trouble adjusting their style to fit the new realities. In their research on top-performing CEOs, Insead professors Ibarra and Hansen have examined what it takes to be a collaborative leader.They've found that it requires connecting people and ideas outside an organization to those inside it, leveraging diverse talent, modeling collaborative behavior at the top, and showing a strong hand to keep teams from getting mired in debate. In this article, they describe tactics that executives from Akamai, GE, Reckitt Benckiser, and other firms use in those four areas and how they foster high-performance collaborative cultures in their organizations. |
| Rothaermel, F. T., & Boeker, W. (2008). Old technology meets new technology: Complementarities, similarities, and alliance formation. Strategic Management Journal. Alliance formation is commonplace in many high-technology industries experiencing radical technological change, where established firms use alliances with new entrants to adapt to technological change, while new entrants benefit from the ability of established players to commercialize the new technology. Despite the prevalence of these alliances, we know little about how these firms choose to ally with specific firms given the range of possible partners they may choose from. This study explores factors that lead to alliance formation between pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. |
Lesson 9
| Henkel, J. & Reitzig, M. (2008). Patent Sharks. Harvard Business Review. R&D companies are increasingly falling prey to patent sharks: firms with hidden intellectual property that surface, threatening to sue, when their rights are inadvertently infringed. The attacks usually come out of the blue, and companies' traditional lines of defence, designed for fighting off visible competitors, are essentially useless in this type of guerrilla warfare. Munich University of Technology's Henkel and London Business School's Reitzig offer five principles to help companies avoid attack. |
| Honeyman, J. M., & Vittengl, S. M. (2009). Diversify patent portfolios with design patents. Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal. The article reports on the significance of investing in design patents by technology companies in the United States. It provides a discussion on the differences between utility and design patents and presents the benefits offered by design patents, including minimal cost, easiness in receiving approval, and easy identification of infringement. It states that considering design patent, along with utility, will play an essential role in protecting the product's unique appearance. |
Lesson 10
Lesson 11
Lesson 12
| Edmondson, A., & Nembhard, I. (2010). Innovation and learning in teams: The challenges = the benefits. Rotman Magazine. The challenges of teamwork can be formidable, but if navigated skilfully, these same challenges can help to build individual and team resilience. |