iMBA 560
Corporate Innovation Strategies

Managing innovation is quite different from managing operations; and, managing uncertainty inherent in innovation requires specific tools and thinking. Whereas operations are an established process driven by existing knowledge, innovation is a learning process that creates new applied knowledge. Operations generate today’s value; but, innovation creates tomorrow’s opportunities. With many markets increasingly becoming more and more competitive, those who innovate best will win the future.

During the past nine weeks, you were exposed to a variety of perspectives on innovation via case studies and a collection of readings. You analyzed company after company and situation after situation that boosted your analytical skills and exposed you to the ways companies and managers actually do things. And, you were at the scene of the action, learning the events and organizational circumstances surrounding a particular managerial situation in the innovation process. You have learned how to identify the sources of innovative success and failure inside corporations and how companies can sustain a capability to innovate. However, there is no recipe for managing innovation, because the challenges that innovation poses change over time and reflect an organization’s unique history and culture.

The readings of assigned book chapters and journal articles stretch your imagination and ability to think about corporate innovation strategies with a wide-ranging set of tools and skills in a conceptually sophisticated, yet practical, way. They do not provide innovation templates to be copied; but, they do provide stimuli for original thinking and accelerate your learning.

Transmuting the multiplicity of innovation objectives into organizational designs, processes and structures, indeed, is a perplexing endeavor. The challenge is how