Chapter 2 - Sources of innovation

Question 1

What are the sources of innovation?

Answer 1

• individuals
• companies -> highly motivated for competitiveness, resource management systems
• universities
• government laboratories
• incubators
• non-profit organizations
• networks that link innovators together, broader range of knowledge and resources

Question 2

What is Creativity?

Answer 2

• ability to produce work that is new and useful
• can be novel at various levels (producer, audience, …)
• one of the pillars of innovation

Question 3

What types of creativity exist?

Answer 3

• Individual Creativity
  
  • single persons
• Organizational Creativity
  
  • companies and groups

Question 4

What types of creativity exist?

Answer 4

• Individual Creativity
  
  • single persons
• Organizational Creativity
  
  • companies and groups

Question 5

Individual Creativity consists of?

Answer 5

• Intellectual abilities
  
  • intelligence, ability to articulate ideas, to look at problems unconventionally
• Knowledge
  
  • understand field, but not too well paradigms (inability to think beyond the existing logic)
• Personality
  
  • confidence in own capabilities, tollerate ambiguity, willingness to overcome obstacles, take reasonable risks
• Motivation
  
  • intrinsic motivation very important, extrinsic can cage creativity (money)
• Environment
  
  • support, collaboration and rewards for creative ideas
• Ability to look at problems in unconventional ways is the most important

Question 6

Organizational Creativity consists of?

Answer 6

• creativity of the individuals within the organization
• social processes and contexts that shapes the interaction between them
• organization’s structure, routines, and incentives [Google, 20% own projects, awards]

Question 7

How should companies encourage creativity?

Answer 7

• encourage employees individuality (thinking and autonomy) and ideas (suggestion box)
  
  • cooperation and exchanges between managers and employees
  • recognitions and incentives for creativity
  • creativity training programs

Question 8

What is innovation?

Answer 8

• It’s the implementation of creative ideas into some new device or process
• combines resources, expertise and creativity

Question 9

Who are the inventors?

Answer 9

• mastered basic tools and operations of the field of invention, but have multi-field specialization
• curious, more interested in problems than solutions
• question the assumptions made in previous works
• have a sense that all knowledge is unified
• seek global solutions rather than local ones, generalists by nature
• develop many, commercialize few
• Dean Kamen

Question 10

Can users be innovators? Why?

Answer 10

• deep understanding of their own needs
• motivation to fulfill needs
• innovations create purely for their own use, not profit

Question 11

Firms R&D characteristics? (branch of researching)

Answer 11

• both basic and applied research
  
  • increase understanding, no particular application
  • increase understanding with specific need in mind
• development
  
  • activities that apply knowledge to produce
• can produce innovation

Question 12

What differences are there between R&D science push and demand pull?

Answer 12

• science push
  
  • linear innovation
  • scientific discovery > invention > manufacturing > marketing
• demand pull
  
  • unmet costumers need
  • needs > invention > manufacturing

Question 13

Collaboration between entities (Customers, Suppliers, Competitors, and Complementors)

Answer 13

• can take different forms
  
  • alliances, licensing, joint ventures, etc
  • most frequent between firms and customers, suppliers and local universities
• lines between complementor and competitor can become blurred
  
  • rivals may collaborate in the development of complementary products
• especially important in high-technology sectors, individual rarely has all resources and capabilities necessary
• size and structure networks change over time

Question 14

What forms can research take? (public and firm POV)

Answer 14

• external sourcing of innovation
• in-house R&D
  
  • heaviest use of external collaboration networks [complements]
  • helps build absorptive capacity to use external information
• public research institutions [universities, government laboratorier, incubators]
  
  • help by giving knowledge and resources to others
• science parks
  
  • collaboration between national and local government institutions, universities, and private firms
• private nonprofit organizations
  
  • in-house R&D and outsourced

Question 15

Technology clusters

Answer 15

• firms in close geographic proximity are more likely to collaborate, knowledge transfer
• regional clusters of firms that have a connection to a common technology
• a valuable labor pool is attractive to new firms that desire similar labor skills
• can lead to improvements in infrastructure and other services in the area
• agglomeration economies, benefits firms reap by clustering together
• competition may reduce their pricing power, risk of competitors of gaining access to knowledge
• can lead to traffic congestion, high housing costs, and higher concentrations of pollution
• technological spillover, benefits of one transfer to others

Question 16

Knowledge Brokers

Answer 16

• firms or individuals

* transfer information between different domains and exploit synergies created by combining existing technologies

Question 17

Likelihood of innovation activities being geographically clustered

Answer 17

Depends on:

• nature of the technology
  
  • protected by patents or copyright, knowledge base, …
• industry characteristics
  
  • degree of market concentration, transportations costs, suppliers available, …
• cultural context of the technology
  
  • population density , infrastructures, …