Paul Merlyn and Liisa Välikangas
In a session of the Strategos Innovation Academy, participants considered how a number of core management processes – for example, strategic planning, capital budgeting…
Abstract
In a session of the Strategos Innovation Academy, participants considered how a number of core management processes – for example, strategic planning, capital budgeting, performance assessment and product and process development – inhibit innovation. Working in groups, the participants identified problems with existing practices and then suggested a number of ways to make the process less toxic to innovation. Today’s strategic‐planning processes rarely emphasize radical innovation – the new business concepts and operational models that are necessary to keep corporations at the head of the pack – either implicitly or explicitly. Another failure that participants identified is the linkage between strategy planning and the annual budgetary cycle. To improve strategic planning, participants made a number of other suggestions, many of which derive from the toxicities and failures of the existing strategic‐planning process. Companies should first ensure that their business definition and associated mission statement are broad. Narrow definitions are likely to reduce a company’s identity to its current business model, thereby impeding the possibility of renewal. Companies should also explicitly include innovation in the strategic‐planning process. A chief innovation officer – a new senior‐level appointee in the company – can help ensure that innovation remains central to the strategic‐planning process. Greater scrutiny of strategic plans can also help. For example, CEOs can reject strategic plans that do not include a substantial amount of innovation. The introduction of new metrics for innovation would help formalize this commitment to innovation. Participants also recommended that companies find ways to dissociate the strategic‐planning process from an annual schedule. Instead, the process needs to become continuous. To this end, some participants advocated renaming the process strategic evolution instead of strategic planning.
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Lotfi Belkhir, Liisa Välikangas and Paul Merlyn
Will your company be like so many “one‐hit” wonders that failed because of their inability to adapt through innovation? Many companies meet this fate. Management shortfalls on the…
Abstract
Will your company be like so many “one‐hit” wonders that failed because of their inability to adapt through innovation? Many companies meet this fate. Management shortfalls on the path to developing new market successes include: (1) A lack of the requisite skills and resources to sustain growth; (2) A CEO’s preoccupation with the existing business. This latter case should quickly be challenged given that the business environment will ultimately render any business concept an anachronism. The only way for a company to sustain itself is through conceiving and nurturing new business ideas that can succeed for the parent business; (3) Either no genuine product innovations, or so few the company does not develop the skill to cultivate them; (4) Entry into the innovation phase too late, such as in Polaroid’s case; (5) Belief that an investment in a new business cannot coexist with the existing business. The company sees true innovative concepts as more as a nuisance or threat to their comfortable lives than as the offer of hope for a new future; (7) The ability to create an abundance of innovation but exhibit a peculiar incompetence in creating a market for it. Witness Xerox. The challenge, then, is to foster a capability for innovation – not merely product enhancement. This capability allows a company to migrate from one business concept to the next as the market changes and opportunities emerge.
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Paul R. Merlyn and Liisa Välikangas
This paper focuses on the famous productivity paradox ‐ despite widespread investments in information technologies, very few of them can be shown to positively impact the…
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This paper focuses on the famous productivity paradox ‐ despite widespread investments in information technologies, very few of them can be shown to positively impact the productivity statistics. The authors argue that the way out of the productivity paradox is to transition out of traditional investments in information processing technologies, offering diminishing returns, to investments in knowledge technologies, offering increasing returns. They argue that such a shift, in order to be effective, must be built with a core focus on meeting the users’ needs in knowledge work. Topics reviewed include knowledge retrieval, including knowledge servers and their architecture; knowledge capture; and knowledge navigation and discovery. The paper concludes with an assessment of emerging knowledge technologies.
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Liisa Välikangas and Paul Merlyn
Imagine a world without turnarounds – just well‐managed companies. Strategic exploration is the means to achieving strategic resilience. But how can senior managers build…
Abstract
Imagine a world without turnarounds – just well‐managed companies. Strategic exploration is the means to achieving strategic resilience. But how can senior managers build organizations where strategic exploration is the rule rather than the exception? First, by exhibiting the courage to explore, and second, by confronting the uncomfortable truths that such exploration might uncover. The article presents a simple but powerful framework, conceived by the Woodside Institute, for strategic exploration. The framework identifies which discoveries merit most attention (“strategic breakthroughs”), which deserve further consideration (“self‐discoveries” and “windows of opportunity”), and which will lead to the back of beyond (“duds”). Examples are drawn from IBM, AT&T, Intel, Sony, Cisco, Hewlett‐Packard, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, and the Coca‐Cola Company.
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Amy Muller, Liisa Välikangas and Paul Merlyn
During the past year, the authors have built a framework for a suite of metrics that senior managers can customize to track and promote innovation success in their companies.
Abstract
Purpose
During the past year, the authors have built a framework for a suite of metrics that senior managers can customize to track and promote innovation success in their companies.
Design/methodology/approach
Senior executives can use the suite of metrics to assess their company's innovativeness over time and hence combat the insidious strategy decay that often afflicts a company's business.
Findings
The framework combines three views on innovation – resource, capability, and leadership – providing the perspective to develop a suite of metrics for assessing and developing a company's capacity for innovation.
Research limitations/implications
The optimal selection of metrics and the optimal value or “sweet spot” of any particular metric will vary from company to company.
Practical implications
As more firms develop strategic innovation metrics and a database that validates their relevance, top managers will learn to assess and guide a company's innovation capability more effectively.
Originality/value
This is the first strategic guideline for building a customizable system of innovation metrics.
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Sarah Lefebvre, Laurel Aynne Cook and Merlyn A. Griffiths
This paper aims to examine consumers’ opinions and behavioral intentions toward foods labeled as containing genetically modified (GM) (transgenic) ingredients across plant and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine consumers’ opinions and behavioral intentions toward foods labeled as containing genetically modified (GM) (transgenic) ingredients across plant and animal-based categories. In light of marketplace changes (i.e. labeling requirements), we explore behavioral measures based on labeling options.
Design/methodology/approach
Three studies, one online projective survey using a convenience sample of consumers and two experiments conducted with Amazon mTurk adult US participants, are included.
Findings
Consumers have negative associations with GM products vs non-GM and are more likely to purchase unlabeled GM products. GM products may offer positive economic, societal and environmental benefits. However, the need for labeling overshadows these benefits and presence of GM labeling increased avoidance. Furthermore, changes in product opinion mediate consumers’ purchase intention and willingness to pay.
Research limitations/implications
GM labeling negatively influences consumers’ opinions and behavioral intentions. This is important for legislators and marketers concerned with counter-labeling effects (e.g. Non-GMO Project Verified).
Practical implications
Debates on efficacy of labeling, inclusion disclosure of ingredients, short-term risks and long-term implications are ongoing globally. Consumer reception and purchase intention can only be changed through governmental and corporate transparency.
Social implications
Widespread misinformation about GM foods, presence in our food supply, impact on health, economy, environment and the marketplace still exists. The findings reflect consumers’ responses to changes proposed by the 2016 National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard legislation.
Originality/value
With the paucity of research on consumer response to the release of a GM animal product into the food supply, this work breaks new ground as the first to examine the impact of disclosure of GM animal-based food type.
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Extensions/applications/revisions of the Marxian vision ofsocialism can broadly be categorized into two polar strands: thecentralized and the decentralized strands of socialist…
Abstract
Extensions/applications/revisions of the Marxian vision of socialism can broadly be categorized into two polar strands: the centralized and the decentralized strands of socialist economic systems. Explores the main postulates of a decentralized version of a socialist economic system as provided by Kautsky, Luxembourg, Bernstein, Bukharin and Lange. The centralized strand of socialist economic systems has been elaborated drawing mainly from the writings of Lenin, Trotsky, Dobb, Sweezy and Baran.