Strategic Management of
Technological Innovation
Melissa Schilling
Chapter 2
SOURCES OF INNOVATION
Getting an Inside Look:
Given Imaging’s Camera Pill
– The Camera Pill: A capsule that is swallowed by
patient that broadcasts images of the small
intestine
– Invented by Gavriel Iddan & team of scientists
• Iddan was a missile engineer – no medical background
• Project initiated by Dr. Scapa, a gastroenterologist
• Iddan applied guided missile concept to problem of
viewing the small intestine
– Developing the Camera Pill
• Many hurdles to overcome: size, image quality, battery life
• Formed partnership with Gavriel Meron (CEO of Applitec)
for capital to commercialize
• Formed partnership with team of scientists lead by Dr. C.
Paul Swain to combine complementary knowledge
• Resulted in highly successful, revolutionary product.
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Getting an Inside Look:
Given Imaging’s Camera Pill
Discussion Questions:
1. What factors do you think enabled Iddan, an engineer with
no medical background, to pioneer the development of
wireless endoscopy?
2. To what degree would you characterize Given’s
development of the camera pill as “science-push” versus
“demand-pull”?
3. What were the advantages and disadvantages of Iddan
and Meron collaborating with Dr. Swain’s team?
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Overview
• Innovation can arise from many different sources and the
linkages between them.
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Creativity
• Creativity: The ability to produce work that is useful and
novel.
– Individual creativity is a function of:
• Intellectual abilities (e.g., ability to articulate ideas)
• Knowledge (e.g., understand field, but not wed to
paradigms)
• Style of thinking (e.g., choose to think in novel ways)
• Personality (e.g., confidence in own capabilities)
• Motivation (e.g., rely on intrinsic motivation)
• Environment (e.g., support and rewards for creative ideas)
• Risk taker (e.g., willingness to take reasonable risks)
• Persistence (e.g., tolerate ambiguity and willingness to
overcome obstacles)
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Creativity
– Organizational Creativity is a function of:
• Creativity of individuals within the organization
• Social processes and contextual factors that shape how those
individuals interact and behave
– Methods of encouraging/tapping organizational creativity:
• Idea collection systems (e.g., suggestion box)
– In 1895 John Patterson, founder of National Cash Register (NCR),
created the first sanctioned suggestion box program
• Originators of adopted ideas were awarded $1 – a revolutionary
concept
– Honda – more than 75% of ideas are implemented
– Bank One – idea repository where employees can collaborate
• Creativity training programs
• Culture that encourages (but doesn’t directly pay for) creativity.
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Transforming Creativity into Innovation
•
•
•
Innovation is the implementation of creative ideas into
some new device or process.
Requires combining creativity with resources and
expertise.
Inventors
– One ten-year study found that inventors typically:
1. Have mastered the basic tools and operations of the field in which they
invent, but they will have not specialized solely on that field.
2. Are curious, and more interested in problems than solutions.
3. Question the assumptions made in previous work in the field.
4. Often have the sense that all knowledge is unified. They will seek
global solutions rather than local solutions, and will be generalists by
nature
• Such individuals may develop many new devices or
processes but commercialize few.
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Theory in Action – The Segway and the iBOT
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Theory In Action –
Segway Human Transporter
• The Segway HT: A self-balancing, two-wheeled scooter
invented by Dean Kamen http://www.usfirst.org/about/bio_dean.htm
− Kamen holds more than 150 U.S. and foreign patents
− Has received numerous awards and honorary degrees
− Never graduated from college
− To Kamen, the solution was not to come up with a new answer to
a known problem, but to instead reformulate the problem
• Developing the Segway
− DEKA http://www.dekaresearch.com/index.html has a balance of
“ideation” and “execution” people
− Philosophy of “kissing frogs”: produce and evaluate a wide range
of potential solutions.
− Segway required numerous external partnerships
− By 2003, had been adopted primarily for commercial and
industrial applications.
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iBOT Mobility System
• iBOT mobility system
http://www.ibotnow.com/functions/mobility-system.html
– Advanced wheelchair that enables users to climb stairs,
negotiate sand, rocks and curbs
– Incorporates a sophisticated balancing system
– Predecessor to Segway
• Collaboration with external partners
– Venture capitalists
– Silicon Sensing Systems developed the gyroscopic sensor
system
– Michelin developed unique “Balance” tires
– Pacific Science helped create the Segway’s electronic motor
– Saft developed a “smart charging” battery
– Had to satisfy government regulations to be allowed on
sidewalks
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Transforming Creativity into Innovation
• Innovation by Users
– Users have a deep understanding of their own needs, and
motivation to fulfill them.
• Laser sailboat developed by Olympic sailors without any formal
market research or concept testing based on their own preferences
– Highly successful in the 70s and 80s
• Indermil – a tissue adhesive based on Superglue. Managers tried to
exploit Superglue’s tendency to bond to skin to develop an
alternative to sutures for surgical applications.
– Experiments in the 70s and 80s failed.
– A presentation by a reconstructive surgeon who had operated on burn
victims in response to the Bradford football stadium fire of 1985
brought the project back to life.
• The doctors had used Superglue to repair skin and stick skin grafts
in place.
• Years later, the patients had almost perfect skin repair
• The CEO gave his full support and serious funding. By 2003 the
product was selling in 40 countries
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Theory In Action
The Birth of the Snowboarding Industry
– First snowboards not developed by sports equipment
manufacturers; rather they were developed by
individuals seeking new ways of gliding over snow
• Tom Sims made his first “ski board” in wood shop class.
• Sherman Poppen made a “snurfer” as a toy for his
daughter – later held “snurfing” contests
• Jake Burton added rubber straps to snurfer to act as
bindings
– By 2001 there were approximately 5.3 million
snowboarders in the United States and the US market
for snowboarding equipment had surpassed $235
million
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Transforming Creativity into Innovation
• Research and Development by Firms
– Research refers to both basic and applied research.
• Basic research aims at increasing understanding of a
topic or field without an immediate commercial
application in mind.
• Applied research aims at increasing understanding of
a topic or field to meet a specific need.
– Development refers to activities that apply
knowledge to produce useful devices, materials, or
processes.
– R&D thus refers to a range of activities that extend
from early exploration of a domain to specific
commercial implementations
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Transforming Creativity into Innovation
• Research and Development by Firms
– Most firms consider in-house R&D to be their most important
source of innovation.
– A firm’s R&D expenditures as a percentage of its revenues has a
strong correlation with its sales growth rate, sales from new
products and profitability.
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Transforming Creativity into Innovation
• Research and Development by Firms
– Science Push (50s and 60s) approach suggests that innovation
proceeds linearly:
Scientific discovery  inventionmanufacturing  marketing
• Discoveries in basic science were the primary source of innovation which
were then translated into commercial applications
– Demand Pull (mid 60s) approach argued that innovation
originates with unmet customer need:
Customer suggestions  invention  manufacturing
• Research staff would develop new products in efforts to respond to
customer problems or suggestions
– Most current research argues that innovation is not so simple,
and may originate from a variety of sources and follow a variety
of paths.
•
•
•
•
In-house R&D
Linkages to customers or other potential users of innovations
Linkages to external sources of scientific and technical info
Linkages to competitors, suppliers and complementors
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Transforming Creativity into Innovation
• Firm Linkages with Customers, Suppliers, Competitors, and
Complementors
– Include alliances, participation in research consortia, licensing arrangements,
joint ventures
– Most frequent collaborations are between firm and their customers,
suppliers, and local universities.
• Firms considers users their most valuable source of new ideas
– Complementors are organizations that produce complementary goods such
as DVD moves for DVD players
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Transforming Creativity into Innovation
• Firm Linkages with Customers, Suppliers,
Competitors, and Complementors
– External versus Internal Sourcing of Innovation
• External and internal sources are complements
– Firms with in-house R&D also heaviest users of external
collaboration networks
– In-house R&D may help firm build absorptive capacity (the
ability of an organization to assimilate and utilize new
knowledge) that enables it to better use information
obtained externally.
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Transforming Creativity into Innovation
• Universities and Government-Funded Research
– Universities
• Many universities encourage research that leads to useful
innovations
• Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 allows universities to collect royalties on
inventions funded with taxpayer dollars
– Led to rapid increase in establishment of technology-transfer offices.
• Offices that facilitate the transfer of technology developed in a
research environment to commercial applications (see article from
WSJ)
• Revenues from university inventions are still very small, but
universities also contribute to innovation through publication of
research results.
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Transforming Creativity into Innovation
• Universities and Government-Funded Research
– In 1950s and 1960s US govt funded over 65% of R&D money, 26% by 2000 but
slack picked up by industry
• Dollar amount of government funding has increased despite percentage drop
– Governments invest in research through:
• Their own laboratories
• Science parks (foster collaboration between govt, universities and private forms) and
incubators (provide funding and advice to nurture the development of new technology
that has potential for important societal benefits but highly uncertain direct returns)
• Grants for other public or private research organizations
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Transforming Creativity into Innovation
• Private Nonprofit Organizations
– Many nonprofit organizations do in-house R&D, fund R&D by
others, or both.
Top 20 US Nonprofit R&D performers, 1997
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Innovation in Collaborative Networks
• Collaborations include (but are not limited to):
–Joint ventures
–Licensing and second-sourcing agreements
–Research associations
–Government-sponsored joint research programs
–Value-added networks for technical and scientific
exchange
–Informal networks
• Collaborative networks are especially important in
high-technology sectors where individual firms rarely
possess all necessary resources and capabilities
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Innovation in Collaborative Networks
• Technology Clusters are regional clusters of firms
that have a connection to a common technology
e.g., Silicon Valley’s semiconductor firms, lower
Manhattan’s multimedia cluster
– Though today’s information technology enables fast,
cheap and easy communication across the globe,
knowledge does not always transfer so easily
– Encompass an array of industries that are linked
through relationships between suppliers, buyers and
producers of complements.
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Innovation in Collaborative Networks
– Agglomeration Economies (benefits firms reap by
locating in close geographical proximity to each
other):
• Proximity facilitates knowledge exchange.
– A willingness to exchange through building trust via interaction
– Develop common ways to understand and articulate the
knowledge
• Cluster of firms can attract other firms to area.
• Supplier and distributor markets grow to service the
cluster.
• Cluster of firms may make local labor pool more
valuable by giving them experience.
• Cluster can lead to infrastructure improvements (e.g.,
better roads, utilities, schools, etc.)
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Innovation in Collaborative Networks
– Downside of Agglomeration Economies
• Proximity of many competitors serving a local market
can lead to competition that reduces their pricing
power via a vis buyers and sellers
• Increase in the likelihood of a firm’s competitors
gaining access to the firm’s proprietary knowledge
• Can lead to traffic congestion, excessively high housing
costs and increased pollution
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Innovation in Collaborative Networks
• Likelihood of innovation activities being geographically
clustered depends on:
– The nature of the technology
• e.g., its underlying knowledge base or the degree to which it can be protected by
patents or copyright, the degree to which its communication requires close and
frequent interaction;
– Industry characteristics
• e.g., degree of market concentration or stage of the industry lifecycle, transportation
costs, availability of supplier and distributor markets; and,
– The cultural context of the technology
• e.g., population density of labor or customers, infrastructure development, national
differences in how technology development is funded or protected.
– Pharmaceutical industry is clustered in the UK and France, not in
Germany or Italy
• May be a result of the national systems of research funding and the
need to share complex technological expertise
– Clothing manufacturing is clustered in Italy but not in the other three
• may be due to cultural factors that influenced the historical rise of
industrial districts
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Innovation in Collaborative Networks
–Technological spillovers (spread of knowledge
across organizational or regional boundaries) occur
when the benefits from the research activities of
one entity spill over to other entities.
• Likelihood of spillovers is a function of:
– Strength of protection mechanisms (e.g., patents, copyright,
trade secrets)
– Nature of underlying knowledge base (e.g., tacit, complex)
– Mobility of the labor pool
– e.g.,a firm’s patenting activities and profits were influenced by
the R&D spending of other firms and universities in its
geographical region (Adam Jaffe)
• Significant influence on innovative activity
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Knowledge Brokers
• Hargadon and Sutton point out that some firms (or individuals)
play a pivotal role in the innovation network– that of knowledge
brokers.
– Knowledge brokers are individuals or firms that transfer
information from one domain to another in which it can be usefully
applied.
• They possess the ability to recognize and capture potential solutions that
may be matched to problems in an unexpected way
– Seek to exploit potential synergies of combining existing technologies
• Robert Fulton saw steam engines used in mines and applied them to boats
– By serving as a bridge between two separate groups of firms,
brokers can find unique combinations of knowledge possessed by
the two groups.
• Thomas Edison’s lab borrowed ideas from different industries to create
innovations in telegraphs, telephones, phonographs, light bulbs and many
others
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Discussion Questions
1. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of a) individuals as
innovators, b) firms as innovators, c) universities as innovators, d)
government institutions as innovators, e) nonprofit organizations as
innovators?
2. What traits appear to make individuals most creative? Are these the same
traits that lead to successful inventions?
3. Could firms identify people with greater capacity for creativity or
inventiveness in their hiring procedures?
4. To what degree do you think the creativity of the firm is a function of the
creativity of individuals, versus the structure, routines, incentives, and culture
of the firm? Can you give an example of a firm that does a particularly good
job at nurturing and leveraging the creativity of its individuals?
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