Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Picture of the Desouza Gang

Hanging Out with the Brother and Sister - Desouza Time

The Kids are Alright: How the Gamer Generation is Changing the Workplace


I have just begun reading another book published by Harvard Business School Press - The Kids are Alright: How the Gamer Generation is Changing the Workplace (Harvard Business School Press, 2006) by John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade. Michelle Morgan, Publicist at HBSP, sent me a copy of the book for review and comments. I plan to complete the book in the next week and will be posting a review. I have made it through the first two chapters and so far, the book is a “must read”….

See - http://www.gotgamebook.com/

Chicago…Philadelphia…

I am headed to Chicago for three days and then will attend the Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Philadelphia…Looking forward to meeting a lot of my colleagues and old friends during this trip…

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Review of Understanding Knowledge as a Commons. Edited by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.

Understanding Knowledge as a Commons. Edited by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. 381 pp. $36.00 (ISBN 0-262-08357-4).

The complete review will be published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

Understanding Knowledge as Commons tackles the dynamics of managing knowledge as a collective resource. While the exploration of national resources (e.g. wildlife, forests, etc) as common resources has a rich tradition in the economic and public policy literatures, the examination of knowledge (and information) as commons has been a recent line of inquiry. The study of information as commons, and especially information infrastructures (e.g. the Internet) as common resources, can be traced to the mid-1990s and to the work of Bernardo Huberman, Rajan M. Lukose, and Howard Rheingold, among others. The authors make a critical contribution to this stream of research by examining the critical dynamics that underpin knowledge as a collective resource, and the accompanying dilemmas, mainly social dilemmas, which govern the management of this resource.

The book is organized into three parts. Part I, "Studying the Knowledge Commons," consists of three chapters. The editors, Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom, open the book with an introductory overview on knowledge commons. In this chapter, the editors provide a historic account of the study of knowledge commons and traditional commons...The chapter concludes with a map of the remainder of the book.

In Chapter 2, David Bollier does an excellent job illustrating the growth of the commons paradigm. This chapter succinctly demonstrates that even through commons may differ across domains (e.g. environmental, technological, etc), the paradigm remains intact and has been growing in popularity.

The final chapter of this section is also authored by the editors. This chapter thoughtfully describes an analytical framework, The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. The IAD framework provides a lens whereby anyone can dissect the various issues and dilemmas facing a commons...

Part II comprises three chapters and addresses the issues of protecting the knowledge commons. Nancy Kranich, in Chapter 4, describes the forces that are threatening the sustainability of knowledge commons and also negatively impacting scholarly communications. She proposes several strategies (e.g. open access to scholarly journals, the development of sustainable digital repositories and digital libraries, community-based preservation efforts and the development of learning and information communities) to counter these forces through the engaged collective action of librarians and scholars. Kranich also addresses the need to change the role of research libraries to meet the current and future needs of knowledge commons...

In the next chapter, "Mertoniansm Unbound? Imagining Free, Decentralized Access to Most Cultural and Scientific Material," is authored by James Boyle, a leading scholar on knowledge commons. Boyle examines the impact of open access to all kinds of cultural and scientific materials by individuals and groups outside the academic confines, and what effect this might have on scholarship, science, and culture. I particularly found his notes on incorporating users into the design process of commons quite salient...Boyle talks about why there is a need to involve users as designers in the creation of commons and to be more appreciative of the knowledge and information they might possess.

Chapter 6 by Donald J. Waters addresses the issue of knowledge preservation. Specifically, Waters tackles citation in a digital world. In today’s world, it would be rare to find an academic article, report, or book without Internet sources. Waters tackles the issue of how knowledge commons are impacted by these citations not being available at future times, or not being available in their original form as cited by an author (as web pages might change or links may be broken)...

The final part of the book, "Building New Knowledge Commons," contains six chapters. Peter Suber opens this section with a chapter entitled, Creating an Intellectual Commons through Open Access. Suber conducts a thorough expose of Open Access and its role in development of the intellectual commons. This chapter is dense and covers subjects such as an overview of open access, royalty models for open access content, legal foundations of open access, tragedies of open access commons and the role of authors in developing open access content.

The most provocative chapter of the book is by Shubba Gosh. Gosh considers the role played by intellectual property in the development of knowledge commons. I found this chapter to be highly entertaining, interesting, and deep. Gosh does an excellent job of providing an outline of the various roles that intellectual property can play in the development of knowledge goods, from being constructive, to facilitating, and even being irrelevant. Gosh then outlines several guiding principles for the design of commons. He outlines why imitation of knowledge (or information) should not be viewed through the strict lens of copyright infringement. With persuasive and vivid examples and creative arguments, Gosh argues that “imitation has important pedagogical and social functions” (pg. 227)...

The process of knowledge creation is discussed by Peter Levine, in Chapter 9. He rightly argues that this process should also be viewed as a commons. Ideally, the process of knowledge creation should be one of collective action, involve diverse stakeholders, and even call for civic engagement. Levine’s central focus is (1) on the need to involve youth, especially adolescents who are unlikely to attend college, in the knowledge creation process through associations, and (2) why universities need to take a more proactive role in ensuring that the knowledge creation process remains a common and not become an isolated and closed, or private, activity.

In the next chapter, Charles M. Schweik describes how the dynamics of open source software (OSS) collaborations can be applied to other forms of knowledge commons. Schweik provides an overview of the OSS movement and the major practices that are employed in these commons...In a previous issue of JASIST, Yukika Awazu and I (Awazu and Desouza, 2004) outlined a similar argument on how the developments in OSS can be used to inform knowledge management practices in the organizations. The argument centered on moving to open, rather than closed, and collaborative, rather than protective, practices to foster effective knowledge management.

In Chapter 11, Wendy P. Lougee explores the changing role of research libraries in knowledge commons. Lougee conducts an expose of how communication conventions have evolved due to advances in distributed computing and the popularity of open-access protocols. She outlines the transformations that have taken place in content, the publication process, academic disciplines, and libraries. As we advance through the digital world and develop more sophisticated knowledge commons, libraries will need to shift their focus from being archivists and stewards of information goods to one of collaborators and catalysts of internet-based communities. The changes outlined by Lougee are salient. In a prior research project, several colleagues and I (Erat, Desouza, Schäfer-Jugel, et al., 2006) outlined how knowledge-based organizations (e.g. pharmaceutical firms) were undergoing structural changes within their sales force to take advantage of internet-based communities...librarians, as noted by Lougee, will need to embrace the need for changing from the reactive stance of archiving and stewarding information to the proactive stance of enabling the creation of information commons through being a catalyst and a collaborator with stakeholders.

The final chapter of the book by James C. Cox and J. Todd Swarthout discusses the case of EconPort, an open-access digital library of microeconomics housed at the University of Arizona. EconPort was created to provide microeconomics educational resources to the general public. One specific goal of EconPort was to provide resources to facilitate the use of experiments in learning, teaching, and researching of microeconomics. The authors focus their comments on the role of incentives in facilitating the creation, utilization, and maintenance of knowledge commons.

Overall, I found this book very interesting. I commend the editors for assembling an eclectic group of scholars to contribute on an important topic. This book will make for an excellent supplemental text in graduate programs in areas of information science, library science, and even knowledge management. The book balances theory and practice. I found the book easy to read the chapters logically laid out. The only concern I have is the one-sided and unilateral focus on preserving knowledge commons. There are conceivably cases where knowledge commons are not a good thing. For example, knowledge commons can suffer from a bystander effect. By this I mean that everyone thinks someone else manages the common. This may lead to several undesirable consequences. In addition, in the current times, some information goods should be protected and secured (e.g. information on nuclear material and the materials and techniques required to make bombs or improvised explosive devices (IEDs)). Moreover, in the corporate setting of most private enterprises, the issues of how to manage internal knowledge commons is not as simple as the unilateral goal of making all knowledge available to all. This book does not provide the reader with a treatment of some of the unintended consequences of knowledge commons and the need for appropriate measures to secure them from these impacts. Even after accounting for this limitation, the book is an excellent resource for researchers who are examining the social dilemmas associated with the emerging field of knowledge commons. Furthermore, I would encourage that students in the library science fields pay particular attention to the chapters by Wendy P. Lougee, Charles M. Schweik, Nancy Kranich, and James Boyle.

References
Awazu, Y., and Desouza, K.C. “Open Knowledge Management: Lessons from the Open Source Revolution,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55 (11), 2004, 1016-1019.

Erat, P. Desouza, K.C., Schäfer-Jugel, A., and Kurzawa, M. “Business Customer Communities and Knowledge Sharing: Exploratory Study of Critical Issues.” European Journal of Information Systems, 15 (5), 2006, 511–524.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

My Uncle Peter Pinto…


Today, I learnt that my Uncle Peter passed away. He passed away in India. Uncle Peter was a good man, a great uncle, and was always one to give good advice. I will miss him. My thoughts are with my Aunty Rita, and cousins Jude, Joyce, Grace, and Ronald, and their families as well.

I will miss you Uncle Peter...I will forever treasure the spicy food we enjoyed...I was planning to come down to India to see you…I guess we missed each other…

Ranking of Scotch (and Scotch Whisky)

I was asked to provide a rating of my favorite Scotch. So, here is my top 15 list that I am making available to all…Enjoy…But, as they say, enjoy responsibly…some of these are quite pricey, especially the Top 3…


1. The Macallan 25 yrs
2. Glenfiddich 30 yrs
3. The Macallan 18 yrs
4. Highland Park 18 yrs
5. The Glenlivet 18 yrs
6. Glenfiddich 18 yrs
7. The Macallan 12 yrs
8. Chivas Regal 12 yrs
9. The Glenlivet 12 yrs
10. Highland Park 12 yrs
11. Glenfiddich 12 yrs
12. Balvenie 12 Doublewood
13. Ballantine's
14. Teacher's Highland Cream
15. Grant's Family Reserve

A good glass of Scotch, with a couple of cubes of ice (on a hot day) or neat (most of the time and especially on a cold day), is how I relax after a hard day’s work…

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Review of Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy. Edited by Brian Kahin and Dominique Foray. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.

Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy. Edited by Brian Kahin and Dominique Foray. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. 504 pp. $38.00 (ISBN 0-262-61214-3).

The complete review will be published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

Developed nations, and developing nations, are in the midst of transforming their economies from industrial economies to knowledge economies. These transitions result in economies where knowledge (in all its forms: human capital, technology, innovation, and even value networks) are the central and critical sources of competitive advantages. Knowledge becomes that which is centrally traded and exchanged, created and communicated, leveraged and transformed. Worldwide continued interest in the field of knowledge management is testament to the realization that there is a need for critical thinking on how to advance our knowledge about managing, living, and thriving in these new economies. Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy pulls together a collection of cutting-edge thinking on critical issues related to thriving in knowledge economies. Topics covered include: measuring knowledge, knowledge communities, the changing role of institutions in knowledge economies, the role of place in knowledge economies, new models of innovation, control and cooperation, and emerging cyber infrastructures. This book grew out of support for conferences by the Organization for Economic Cooperation ad Development (OECD), and the Digital Society and Technology Program and the Digital Government Program of the National Scientific Foundation. The book has seven sections and 25 chapters, which I only briefly review here.

Three chapters set the stage for the book's motivation, the key themes covered, and the OECD’s work on transforming economies to knowledge economies. Brian Kahin opens the book with a discussion of the prospects for a knowledge policy. Kahin’s main argument is that while there is a real need for knowledge policy, the transformational effects of knowledge economies are too new to understand their individual or broad societal impacts. Discussions of knowledge policy thus remain balkanized and isolated. Knowledge policy discussions continue to remain fragmented across academic disciplines and there is a real need to take a holistic perspective at the issue of knowledge policy...Dominique Foray, the co-editor of the book, lays out the major themes covered by contributors of the book in the second chapter. He addresses the deployment of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as knowledge instruments. This is followed by a discussion of the peculiarities of institutions that create and transmit knowledge. Issues such as the patent system, the role of incentives for inventors, knowledge spillovers, trust building mechanisms, division of labor, and the role of universities, are addressed here. Other themes are the co-evolution of technologies and institutions, knowledge division and dispersion, saliency of public knowledge, and open and distributed systems of knowledge...Ásgeirsdóttir, Deputy Secretary General of the OECD, discusses the work of the OECD on cultivating knowledge economies. Ásgeirsdóttir puts forth four simple, yet salient, messages to guide the development of knowledge economies. The messages are: (1) good economic fundamentals are critical for stimulating knowledge economies, (2) development of knowledge economies is dependent on four pillars: innovation, new technologies, human capital, and enterprise dynamics, (3) globalization impacts the four pillars of knowledge in significant ways, and (4) there is a need for innovations in organizational practices and knowledge management to realize the benefits of the knowledge economy.

The next section of the book, Measuring Knowledge, contains two chapters. Chapter 4, by Fred Gault, addresses the role of official statistics in measuring the economic effects of knowledge. He discusses challenges faced when using official statistics to measure knowledge-based economies...Chapter 5, Assessing Innovation Capacity, by Reinhilde Veugelers, evaluates the Lisbon strategy developed to enhance the development of knowledge economies in the European Union...

Knowledge Communities, the next section, contains three chapters. Chapter 6, by Bengt-Åke Lundvall, discusses why we need to pay serious attention to learning within communities and the micro social capital dynamics of community-based interactions when measuring economic performance of knowledge economies...Chapter 7 by Tom Schuller, also of a conceptual nature, focuses on knowledge networks using a social capital lens...The final chapter in this section is Knowing Communities in Organization by Patrick Cohendet. The chapter begins by outlining the characteristics, properties, and limits of knowing communities in organizations...

The next section discusses the changing role of institutions. In Epistemic Infrastructure in the Rise of the Knowledge Economy, Margaret Hedstrom and John L. King trace the changing nature of epistemic infrastructures, most notably describing the changes to libraries and museums...Chapter 10, by Robin Cowan, outlines the role of universities in the knowledge economy. Cowan begins the chapter by conducting a historic tour of the changing role of university missions and goals from historic times to the present...Chapter 11, The Impact of ICT on Tertiary Education, by Kurt Larsen and Stephan Vincent-Lancrin, looks at the role of e-learning technologies. Specifically, the authors examine the role of e-learning techniques in furthering tertiary education...The authors make the radical claim that e-learning techniques might, “live up to its more radical promises in the future and really lead to the invention of new ways of teaching, learning, and interacting with a knowledge community made up of learners and teachers” (pg. 167), I remain skeptical of this, but am cautiously hopeful. The final chapter in this section is by David Mowery and Bhaven Sampat. The authors discuss the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which has been held as a model for piece of legislation geared at promoting university-industry technology transfer and the international effort to imitate the act...

Knowledge and Place, the next section, comprises of two chapters. Andrew Wyckoff and Martin Schaaper address the dynamics of global competition for highly skilled workers. This chapter is my favorite from the collection. The authors rightly note that the US is a nation at risk due its weak preparation of students in areas of reading, mathematics, and science...Chapter 14, by Jan Fagerberg, discusses the role of knowledge in enabling for development across the globe. The chapter discusses the current thinking by leading scholars on the role of knowledge for development...

In New Models of Innovation, Eric von Hippel opens the section by discussing the democratizing of innovation...Stefan Thomke, a former student of von Hippel, discusses the role of experimentation in innovation and technology change in Chapter 16. Thomke outlines the need for experimentation in discovery, especially the need to learn from experiments...In Chapter 17, W. Edward Steinmueller carries the discussion on user involvement to its next natural stage – the management of innovation platforms. Platforms, for products and services, have been around for a while. What has changed in recent times is the degree of modularity, ease of assembly (and disassembly), reuse of components, and emergence of standards, which has made the management of platforms less cumbersome...The final chapter in this section is by Carliss Y. Baldwin and Kim B. Clark. The authors focus on the issue of designs, the instruction set crafted out of knowledge than transforms resources into consumable products and services of value. The authors argue that the concept of designs (i.e. how they are architected, deployed, completed, and generate value, etc) is significant enough to warrant a call “to integrate the study of designs across disciplines and make them the focus of unified scientific research in their own right” (pg. 300); I could not agree more.

The next section, Models of Control and Cooperation, contains five chapters. Chapter 19, by Dietmar Harhoff details the current dynamics of the patent system, namely the issue of quantity versus quality, and calls for policy changes to improve the incentive system associated with gaining patent rights. Iain M. Cockburn, in Chapter 20, conducts an excellent exposé of the issues of blurred boundaries between open scientific resources and commercial exploitation of knowledge using the case of biomedical research...In the next chapter, Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole build on the comments on Cockburn by addressing the economics of technology sharing...In the next chapter, Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole build on the comments on Cockburn by addressing the economics of technology sharing. The authors provide a brief historic overview of the open source software movement that has called into question several fundamental economic theories. The authors provide a brief historic overview of the open source software movement that has called into question several fundamental economic theories...Chapter 22, by Arti K. Rai, discusses the dynamics of open and collaborative research in the context of biomedical research. The field of biomedical research is undergoing fundamental changes; there are serious pressures to move from a secretive and closed model of research to one that is open and collaborative...Brian Fitzgerald closes out this section by examining the evolution of open source software. Brian discusses how the open source model called for a shift in the software engineering tensions, and what one might envision the dynamics of the next generation of open source software movement look like for software developers.

The final section of the book contains two chapters on the topic of cyber infrastructure. Paul A. David discusses the challenges faced in leveraging our rather technically sophisticated cyber infrastructure for scientific collaboration. David rightly notes that technical challenges that will not prevent us from exploiting the infrastructure for scientific development, but social and policy, also known as the soft, issues that need to be addressed. C. Suzanne Iacono and Peter A. Freeman close out the book with a discussion of socio-technical challenges the scientific and policy communities will face as the cyber infrastructure continues to evolve.

Overall, this is a highly dense, interesting, and current collection of thinking on the topic of knowledge economies. I enjoyed reading this book. This book will be an excellent supplemental text for graduate courses in the areas of information systems, group and team studies, knowledge management, industrial economics, and technology management. The book is well-organized and the chapters flow logically. The book can be appreciated by both novices and experts in a wide array of disciplines, and its readership could include students, researchers, policy makers, and even curious minds that have an interest in economic development. While the book is quite dense already, I would have liked to see more references made to the mainstream knowledge management, knowledge organization, and even anthropological studies on the development of economies. These references are absent for the most part. This is a major shortcoming. At the very least, I would have expected the editor to state, even if only briefly, why that literature was ignored or not considered salient to the arguments laid forth in the book. The other concern I found is that the collection of authors, each of whom is highly accomplished and noteworthy, did not represent a globally representative group. I would have liked to see comments from authors in knowledge economies that have not yet developed or are struggling with the issues that the book points to. Bringing the perspective of these authors in the book would have made it a more comprehensive and engaging read. These limitations aside, I still feel energized about my own research agenda, in the area of knowledge management and complex informational problems, and the zeal for doing research that furthers the development of sustainable knowledge economies. The editors should be commended for doing an excellent job assembling this valuable scholarly product.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Global Preponderance : 2007 Bled Strategic Forum: European Union 2020: Enlarging and Integrating

I have just been invited to serve as a Panelist on the topic of Global Preponderance at the 2007 Bled Strategic Forum: European Union 2020: Enlarging and Integrating. The invitation came from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia, Dr. Dimitrij Rupel. I have accepted the invitation with pleasure and am excited about the opportunity to contribute my thoughts on this important issue. This is one of the highest honors I have received, and I thank the organizing committee for inviting me. I will be sharing my thoughts on the issue of cultivating global innovation societies, the role of intellectual asset transfer across boundaries, why countries need to consider cooperative innovation systems to work towards greater goals, what are the challenges in establishing these (e.g. immigration, global talents, etc), and what are some of the solutions.

Dignitaries at this event will include: H.E. Mr. Janez Janša, Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, H.E. Mr Nikola Gruevski, Prime Minister of the Republic of Macedonia, Mr Ali Babacan, State Minister for Economy of the Republic of Turkey and Turkey's chief negotiator in accession talks with the EU, Mr Hans van der Loo, Head European Union Liaison, Shell International, Dr Kuniko Inoguchi, Member of the House of Representatives of Japan, among others. The meeting is sponsored by the Slovenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Center for European Perspective, Government Communication Office, and the Institute for Strategic Studies. The forum aims to bring together top political leaders, business executives and experts, and generate commitments for implementation of new strategies designed to allow Europe to better use its strategic weight and space. Further, out objective is to help stimulate public-private sector cooperation in developing integrated approaches to resolving outstanding strategic issues.

For details on the conference, please see - http://www.bledstrategicforum.org. The program can be found at: http://www.bledstrategicforum.org/index.php?id=4&lang=en

Old is Gold...May Be?

My first scholarly article written in 2000, originally called "Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare Management", was later published as "Knowledge Management in Hospitals: A Process Oriented View and Staged Look at Managerial Issues" in the International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management (4 (6), 2002, 478-497). A slightly revised version of the paper then appeared in - Creating Knowledge Based Healthcare Organizations (edited by N. Wickramasinghe, J.N.D. Gupta, and S.K. Sharma) in 2004.

Today, I learnt that it has been reprinted in Jennex, M.E. (Editor), Knowledge Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (6 Volumes), Hershey, PA: Information Science, 2007, Vol. 5, Chapter 14, 2191-2204

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Voice of America Interview on Outsourcing


I was interviewed by Michael O'Sullivan, the West Coast Bureau Chief of Voice of America on the issue of outsourcing. See - US Lawyer Finds Medical Experts in India, Los Angeles, 12th July 2007, http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-07-12-voa84.cfm. The recording of the interview can be found at: http://www.voanews.com/mediaassets/english/2007_07/Audio/mp3/osullivan_legal_medical_outsourcing.mp3

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Bridging Academia and Businesses to Make Positive Impacts on Society

Research in the management sciences, from organizational behavior to information systems and public administration, has the potential to play a critical role in informing change in our societies. However, much of the potential for change is ever realized – sufficient research is not conducted in areas of importance to our global society (e.g. improvements to healthcare systems in third-world nations), research is not published in a timely manner (e.g. mainstream information systems journal are notorious for publishing articles that are on average three years out-dated), research is not accessible to global audiences (e.g. most journals still only publish in English), research projects are geared to the needs of funding agencies(hence, most research is centered on the needs of developed nations), promotion and tenure decisions dominate academic creativity and zeal (hence, research that fits established norms and incentive systems is encouraged at the expense of studying difficult problems that may not be easily publishable), and finally the metrics for measuring research impact are academia-centered (e.g. citation analysis), and not society-oriented (e.g. improvements of the quality of life, change in society). In very rare cases, business school academics make a significant and measurable impact on society.

Businesses, on the other hand, continue to make impacts on our societies. After all, they are responsible for providing individuals with a source of livelihood, stimulation through work, and even a sense of achievement through the attainment of professional ranks. While these positives are critical and even recognizing that businesses are a mainstay of our society, we must not ignore the negatives. Businesses have shaped societies into those that are materialistically-oriented – environments where what you own is given as much, if not more, signification as who one is. In addition, the automation of work through the use of technologies has made the lives of many low-skilled workers very difficult and tiring. Even more critical, is the fact that natural resources of the under-developed nations have been exploited towards commercial ends, without consummate repayments to develop these nations.

Hence, an important question for debate is how might academia and industry engage in collaborations so as to enable for positive changes to our societies. To this end, there are three issues that must be addressed. First, is to change the nature of research conducted in the management sciences. Second, to change the outlook
of business on research conducted at business schools. Businesses must appreciate the fact that academia represents a viable medium by which they can make positive and measurable impacts on societies. Third and probably most importantly, is to change the mediums of engagements between academia and business.

I am working on an article on this topic...Feel free to send me any suggestions/inputs/critiques/etc...

Monday, July 09, 2007

Demystifying the Link between Innovation and Business Value: A Process Framework

Do not miss my next talk:

Two universal truths underpin most business operations: (1) unless businesses can demonstrate value to their stakeholders on a consistent basis they will lose customers and markets, get overrun by the competition, and eventually become extinct, and (2) to generate business value, an organization must constantly innovate, and do so in an effective and efficient manner.

Innovation is a crucial component of business strategy, but the process of innovation can be difficult to manage. To plan organizational initiatives or bolster innovation requires a firm grasp of the innovation process. Few organizations have transparently defined such a process.

In this presentation, I will offer a process framework and propose mechanisms to measure the value of innovation. The innovation process will be broken down into the discrete stages of idea generation and mobilization, screening and advocacy, experimentation, commercialization, diffusion and implementation. For each stage, I will provide context, outputs and critical ingredients as well as mechanisms to measure performance. I will finish by linking these measures to business value measures.

Specifically you will learn:

1. the stages of innovation -- from creating ideas to commercialization -- and diffusing and implementing products and services
2. how successful organizations conduct activities in each of the stages
3. how to measure process performance and improve its maturity
4. how to link the innovation process to business value measures

This talk is hosted by The Management Roundtable. See Link for more details on the talk.