Building+an+Innovative+Product+Development+Organization

Building an Innovative Product Development Organization
Wednesday, April 2, 2012 <>

Topic overview:
In today's class we will look at how different companies organize themselves to encourage innovation, creativity, and extraordinarily effective new product development teams. We will introduce some core principles and then use these principles as a guide to look at how four companies who have been very successful at product innovation have organized themselves to do so (Google, Apple, 3M and IDEO). As you will see, there are some common themes across these companies' organizational decisions but each has taken a somewhat different approach to becoming excellent at product innovation, and each has succeeded in their own way.

By the end of class today, you should:
 * Be able to identify and explain some of the common traits of high-performing new product development organizations
 * Have evaluated and explored how four different organizations have applied (or ignored) well understood techniques to encourage innovation in product organizations.
 * Have some good ideas about concrete steps a company can take to organize itself to create effective product innovation teams.

Preparation for class:
We will also be discussing brief case studies that look at how Google, IDEO, Apple, and 3M organize themselves for innovation. To prepare for that discussion, you should read the following items and come to lass prepared to discuss them:
 * You should have completed reading The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelly.
 * Google and 3M mini case studies [[file:Innovation Org Case Studies.pdf]]
 * Source: Melissa Schilling, Strategic Management of Technological Innovation, 3rd Edition, MacGraw-Hill Irwin.
 * Article on Apple: "The Seeds of Apple's Innovation", Bloomberg BusinessWeek, October 12, 2004. This is an old interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Although the business context is a bit dated, Jobs lays out some of the core principles that drive Apple's innovation and product development efforts. It is particularly interesting to read knowing how the story turned out, so to speak, over the six years after the article was written.
 * @http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041012_4018_db083.htm

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