Chapter 2 - Sources of innovation Flashcards
1
Q
What are the sources of innovation?
A
- 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
2
Q
What is Creativity?
A
- ability to produce work that is new and useful
- can be novel at various levels (producer, audience, …)
- one of the pillars of innovation
3
Q
What types of creativity exist?
A
- Individual Creativity
- single persons
- Organizational Creativity
- companies and groups
4
Q
What types of creativity exist?
A
- Individual Creativity
- single persons
- Organizational Creativity
- companies and groups
5
Q
Individual Creativity consists of?
A
- 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
6
Q
Organizational Creativity consists of?
A
- 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]
7
Q
How should companies encourage creativity?
A
- 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
8
Q
What is innovation?
A
- It’s the implementation of creative ideas into some new device or process
- combines resources, expertise and creativity
9
Q
Who are the inventors?
A
- 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
10
Q
Can users be innovators? Why?
A
- deep understanding of their own needs
- motivation to fulfill needs
- innovations create purely for their own use, not profit
11
Q
Firms R&D characteristics? (branch of researching)
A
- 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
12
Q
What differences are there between R&D science push and demand pull?
A
- science push
- linear innovation
- scientific discovery > invention > manufacturing > marketing
- demand pull
- unmet costumers need
- needs > invention > manufacturing
13
Q
Collaboration between entities (Customers, Suppliers, Competitors, and Complementors)
A
- 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
14
Q
What forms can research take? (public and firm POV)
A
- 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
15
Q
Technology clusters
A
- 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
