Innovation Case

innovation

Assignment #3: Innovation Interview DUE March 6, 2011

Interview someone who is responsible for innovation in an organization outside of Boston University. There are few constraints on who you interview only that they must have responsibility for innovation (i.e. Chief Technology Officer, Head of R&D, Chief Operating Officer, VP or Director R&D, VP or Director Applications, Head of Engineering etc.)

1) Develop a list of questions to understand their firm's innovation practices, processes and structures given the material covered in class. Feel free to tap your natural curiousity about what we discuss in class. To what degree are the concepts, tools and techniques that we discuss in class applied in the real world?

2) Write up an analysis of your interview(s) including a brief summary of the firm, your questions, and your assessment of the firm's strengths and weaknesses in implementing the innovation practices discussed in class. Include recommendations on how the firm might improve and your insights into the challenges associated with implementing the processes, structures and strategies covered in class in real world situations. Identify any related practices - processes, structures or strategies that the manager emphasized but were not discussed in class.

3) Submit your assignment to SMG tools before class March 6, 2011. It should be no longer than 3 double spaced pages. You can include your interview questions as an appendix that will not count toward the page count. Your grade will be based on your depth of analysis in terms of the questions asked and what you did with the information provided, given what has been covered in class, not upon how well the firm is doing its innovation work.

- Value of innovation - multi discipline v/s single discipline

- Long tail of collaboration - many tries - one solution

- Method of recombination

- Design approach - observe (study, record, reflect), redefine the problem, ideate, experiment, implement and learn

- Human interaction to the design

- What is innovation?

- Lone inventor v/s group

- Principles of design - visibility, mapping, affordances (how can it be used), feedback

- Paradox - novel but familiar; continuity but variance

- Creative abrasion