Strategic Innovation: Syllabus

Course Preview #1
Course Preview #2
Course Preview #3

Strategic Innovation: Summary

This course gives participants a new set of tools for and experience in finding and developing innovative alternatives for addressing strategic business problems. You will explore creativity from individual and team perspectives and identify innovation opportunities and roadblocks in organizational settings. Exercises and a real-time case study enable hands-on learning, and guest speakers from well-known innovators in industry share their experience with the class. You will survey various creativity methodologies and identify prospects for increasing the level of innovation in your business.

Learn how to:

• Develop a broad range of high-value alternatives
• Identify and work through conceptual blocks in idea generation
• Utilize both top-down and bottom-up tools to frame business problems
• Use customer experience as a driver of insightful alternative generation
• Cycle between qualitative iteration and evaluation to improve strategic options
• Explore and communicate ideas with a broad set of tools
• Review different creativity methodologies and models and select those that are appropriate for your business needs
• Identify hurdles in your organization's innovation.

Strategic Innovation: Syllabus

Case Study
Cynthia Benjamin, SDG
Interspersed among the lectures and speakers will be an ongoing exercise in alternative generation and refinement. The case will allow immediate practice in the tools and techniques covered in class. Participants will work together in small teams to frame an unstructured issue, challenge constraints given customer needs, and refine and present an innovative approach to a challenging strategic opportunity.

Individual Creativity
Bill Burnett, Stanford School of Engineering
Professor Burnett introduces the theory and practice of identifying hurdles to our own individual creativity and looking at problems in new ways. Hands-on exercises and games are a fun and interactive session to stimulate imagination and practice new ways of thinking.

Defining and Framing Problems
Carl Spetzler
A clear understanding of scope is critical in defining specific issues to be addressed in any problem-solving exercise. Dr. Spetzler presents a methodology to help identify and separate constraints and tactical issues from the most strategic questions to focus on, and he shares experience from his 25 years of management consulting.

Team and Organizational Creativity
Jim Adams, author and Professor Emeritus, Stanford School of Engineering
Social conventions, habits, and group dynamics can often get in the way of individuals' creativity when we work within teams and in the business setting. Professor Adams shares his perspective on some of the more common barriers to creativity in social settings and leads the group through hands-on exercises.

Design Thinking: Framing Problems from a Customer's Point of View
Bill Burnett
Using methodology from Stanford's Joint Program in Design (a collaboration between the School of Engineering and the Art Department), Professor Burnett challenges us to think broadly about problem definition and constraints placed on teams too early in the problem-solving process and to think about options from various customer points of view.

Customer Understanding and Need-finding as a Source of Ideas
Dennis Boyle, IDEO
Some of the most successful product and service innovations are the result of a customer-centric perspective and process. IDEO Product Development has pioneered the application of customer-based need-finding and is wellknown for its unique approach to working with clients in many industries. Mr. Boyle shares some of his experience from 20+ years of working with some of the world's largest companies on breakthough solutions to issues customers could not articulate themselves.

Models and Prototypes: Iterating within the Innovation Cycle
Cynthia Benjamin
Refinement and iteration of alternatives are central to successful innovation, whether you are addressing a product in development or a high-level business problem. Depending on where you are in the innovation cycle, different tools can be used for communication and insight. We explore techniques for iterative learning and idea sharing, as well as a process and rationale for working on the most valuable or difficult parts of a problem first.

Hurdles to Organizational Innovation
Robert Sutton, Stanford d.school and School of Engineering
Even the most creative individuals and teams cannot sustain innovation or bring it to market if their organization unknowingly puts up barriers. Professor Sutton is the coauthor of The Knowing-Doing Gap, Weird Ideas That Work, and the new Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Base Management. He discusses his research on why organizations have trouble implementing innovation programs and ideas for promoting creative cultures.

Organizational Models
Cynthia Benjamin
Numerous approaches exist for implementing innovation initiatives, but the most successful organizations share a common set of characteristics: they have the right people leading and participating, they have a clear and appropriate process, and they have a culture aligned with their innovation needs. The class uses this opportunity to discuss various components of innovation models and the structures required to support them.

Successful Innovation in Business: Industry Guest Speaker
Tom Cripe, Connect + Develop Program, Procter & Gamble
P&G is wellknown for its innovative products and processes and has been especially successful in the last few years. Mr. Cripe is a member of the Connect + Develop team, charged with crossing boundaries between internal and external sources of innovation and value in new and creative ways. He discusses his challenges and success stories with the class and talks about critical organizational support structures required to nurture this type of innovation.

Integrating Innovation in Your Business Strategy
Carl Spetzler and Cynthia Benjamin
Review of the course highlights, with an emphasis on taking action within your organization:

• Integrating both innovative and evaluative thinking into decision processes
• Identifying key elements that help transform working teams
• Creating, iterating and communicating ideas
• Implementing appropriate organizational or longer-term initiatives