Innovation Engines

In Engines of Innovation, Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein make the case for the pivotal role of research universities as agents of societal change. They argue that universities must use their vast intellectual and financial resources to confront global challenges such as climate change, extreme poverty, childhood diseases, and an impending worldwide shortage of clean water. They provide not only an urgent call to action but also a practical guide for our nation's leading institutions to make the most of the opportunities available to be major players in solving the world's biggest problems. A preface and a new chapter by the authors address recent developments, including innovative licensing strategies, developments in online education, and the value of arts and sciences in an entrepreneurial society.

In an uncertain economy where business risk is significant, the company tends to rely more on its environment than to invest, for example, in all steps of technological creation; This can be explained by the fact that investments in the acquisition (ownership) of production resources are less expensive than those implied in the formation of these resources; which also explains the attractiveness (in an open economy) of regions with abundant scientific and technical resources. To understand and analyze the innovation process in order to better design and launch new goods, services and technologies, one has to consider the creative dimension of the individual, the business and the organization in general. In new approaches to innovation, the entrepreneur and the company are analyzed through their skills, and their function of resource generation; Innovation thus becomes endogenous, gradual or radical, integrated in a complex process with many feedbacks and interactions. The innovative organization (small or large) is presented in this book as a dynamic system composed of specific and diverse skills (including those of the contractor, engineers or managers). By acquiring, combining and mobilizing these skills, the innovative agent (entrepreneur or company) can create technological resources and develop relations with its environment. Hence the importance of management in design, implementation, protection of intellectual property as well as of the development of new goods, services and technology, commercial and organizational models.

Innovation is at the heart of progress and success in the business world, but finding that spark of creative brilliance is something that many companies still struggle to achieve. Whether you are starting a new business or trying to breathe new life into an existing one, the strategies and philosophies of the ten innovation engines profiled in this book can act as an inspirational playbook. See how your company or career measures up before implementing those new techniques to drive innovation, increase customer engagement, and ultimately guide your long-term success.

Written by experts on innovation and growth, this book provides the necessary tools to systematically develop and sustain profitable innovation pipelines. In a hypercompetitive global market, businesses must innovate to survive; yet the failure rate for innovation is extremely high. Strategists and thought leaders, Cheryl Perkins and Dr. Sanjay Mazumdar, offer a sophisticated yet practical approach for implementing successful innovation. Leveraging thought-provoking questions and powerful templates, the book outlines how companies can leverage core strengths, build internal innovation capabilities, partner effectively, and identify the promising areas to pursue. In addition, the book highlights emerging innovations in several major industries, providing fodder to fuel creative thinking and exploration of possible applications across a variety of different industries. Managers and leaders will welcome the innovation insights and examples, as well as the templates to build an organization’s plan to diagnose patterns of innovation, identify opportunities, and apply emerging innovations in their own industries and businesses.

Harnessing the power of software platforms: what executives and entrepreneurs must know about how to use this technology to transform industries and how to develop the strategies that will create value and drive profits. Software platforms are the invisible engines that have created, touched, or transformed nearly every major industry for the past quarter century. They power everything from mobile phones and automobile navigation systems to search engines and web portals. They have been the source of enormous value to consumers and helped some entrepreneurs build great fortunes. And they are likely to drive change that will dwarf the business and technology revolution we have seen to this point. Invisible Engines examines the business dynamics and strategies used by firms that recognize the transformative power unleashed by this new revolution—a revolution that will change both new and old industries. The authors argue that in order to understand the successes of software platforms, we must first understand their role as a technological meeting ground where application developers and end users converge. Apple, Microsoft, and Google, for example, charge developers little or nothing for using their platforms and make most of their money from end users; Sony PlayStation and other game consoles, by contrast, subsidize users and make more money from developers, who pay royalties for access to the code they need to write games. More applications attract more users, and more users attract more applications. And more applications and more users lead to more profits. Invisible Engines explores this story through the lens of the companies that have mastered this platform-balancing act. It offers detailed studies of the personal computer, video game console, personal digital assistant, smart mobile phone, and digital media software platform industries, focusing on the business decisions made by industry players to drive profits and stay a step ahead of the competition. Shorter discussions of Internet-based software platforms provide an important glimpse into a future in which the way we buy, pay, watch, listen, learn, and communicate will change forever. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.

In Engines of Innovation, Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein make the case for the pivotal role of research universities as agents of societal change. They argue that universities must use their vast intellectual and financial resources to confront global challenges such as climate change, extreme poverty, childhood diseases, and an impending worldwide shortage of clean water. Combining their own experiences cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset within one of the nation's elite public universities with detailed descriptions of the approaches taken by others, Thorp and Goldstein provide not only an urgent call to action but also a practical guide for our nation's leading institutions to become major players in solving the world's biggest problems. The result is a provocative and thoughtful beginning to an important conversation among educators, their supporters and trustees, policymakers, and the public at large as to how the American research university can best meet its societal responsibilities. All royalties from this book have been assigned by the authors to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to support innovation and entrepreneurship.

Disruptive Innovation and Digital Transformation: 21st Century New Growth Engines is for executive leadership, senior management, innovation catalysts, and digital marketing teams tasked with transforming businesses by accelerating growth through disruptive innovations and digital capabilities. It is a practical guide with concise insights for understanding the applications of disruptive innovation and how to iteratively apply them to projects and opportunities. It garners insights from the best minds across relevant disciplines— from its original theory and latest updates—to arrive at new insights on digital transformation. The author evolves key approaches to disruptive innovation theory to reveal new digital applications and tells leaders what to look for– major categories of customers’ expectations in an escalating pattern to understand in what context digital plus disruptive innovations must be aligned with consumer preferences, environments, and the jobs-to-be-done, which is modeled in a new theory, Disruptive Innovation Customers’ Expectations (DICE). DICE provides methods to use to lead digital disruption across products, services, and business models. DICE translates the vague parts of disruptive innovation by simplifying them down to what-to-do. DICE takes away the elusive nature of disruptive innovation by advising leaders: how to scan, to track, and to detect disruptions. This book provides leaders with the right lenses to fillter markets, giving order to complexity, and making disruptive innovation simpler.