Faculty
Professor Christopher R. Trimble
Objectives
Overview
Compare the Fortune 500 list of several decades ago to today’s list and you may be surprised at just how much it has changed. Building a corporation that can sustain success as the business environment evolves from one decade to the next is difficult. This is an accomplishment that can be claimed by only a handful of corporations.
The powerful forces of globalization and the digital revolution have only increased turnover among top corporations. In order to stay ahead of the game, corporations must learn to continuously create, grow, and profit from innovation of all forms — new processes, new products, new services, moves into adjacent markets, and breakthrough new businesses.
There is just one problem. There are fundamental incompatibilities between innovation and ongoing operations. And yet, somehow, corporations must achieve simultaneous excellence in both. How?
This course is based on eight years of research conducted here at the Tuck School by my co-author, Vijay Govindarajan, and I. This research has been the core activity of Tuck’s William F. Achtmeyer Center for Global Leadership. We have published findings from this research through several channels, including our 2005 book, Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators – from Idea to Execution, through papers in the Harvard Business Review, the MIT Sloan Management Review, the California Management Review, and through a column on Fast Company’s website.
Audience
This is an interdisciplinary general management course. It is related to courses in the areas of strategy, management control, innovation and technology, and organizational behavior.
Method and Expectations
This class will be taught using the case method. Although I assign some additional reading, you should spend most of your study time focused on the case studies. You should read each case at least twice. I also strongly encourage study groups of any size.
In addition to assigning the case studies, I have added a few readings, including a few from our own publications, such as a few chapters from Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators, to help reinforce key points in the course.
You will notice that some of the chapters in Ten Rules are focused on the same case studies we examine in this course. However, these chapters are abbreviated retellings of the cases and only partial analyses. I have listed these chapters as optional readings, and suggest that the best time to read them is after the in-class discussion, to reinforce some of the central points from the session.
What This Course IS…and IS NOT…About
Imagine for a moment that you are a consultant and you have been asked to develop a strategy for a major innovation initiative for a large and successful company. Based on your research, you devise a business plan, and present it to the CEO. The CEO likes it, and decides to invest on the basis of your recommendation.
This course is about what happens next. We will focus on the challenges faced by the leaders of innovation initiatives, as well as how CEOs and other senior executives can either help or get in the way.
Thus, this course focuses on strategy implementation, not strategy formulation. That is, we are much more interested in the HOW than the WHAT.
This Course is NOT About Strategy Formulation
In the past, I have found that it is very easy for students to caught up in, and invest a lot of energy in, analyzing issues of strategy formulation. Is the innovation initiative advisable or not? However, strategy formulation is generally not the best use of time in this course. The cases we’ll study were not written from this perspective, and there is not enough information in the cases to support this type of discussion. Therefore, it will usually be best to avoid the following points of debate during this course:
Whether or not you think that the target customer will buy the innovative new product or service / whether the value proposition is compelling.
Whether or not you think the case company can beat the competition.
Whether or not you think the case company has a cost advantage.
These “Three Cs” – customer, competitor, costs – are the key issues of strategy formulation. I want you to assume that the case protagonists have invested a great deal of energy in developing a strategy, and that they are smart people.
This Course IS About Execution
“Execution” is a broad space. Let’s narrow in a bit. We are going to focus on the subset of generically-applicable questions that all companies face with respect to their innovation initiatives. In particular, we will look at the following organizational levers.
In particular, we will look at the following organizational levers.
Structure – Formal reporting structure (the org chart), decision rights, information flows, processes definitions.
Staff – Leadership style, hiring criteria, promotion criteria, career paths, competencies emphasized.
Systems – Planning, budgeting, and control systems; measures of business performance, criteria for evaluating personal performance, incentive and compensation systems.
Culture – Assumptions about types of behaviors that are valued, assumptions about drivers of business success, decision biases.
These are powerful shapers of organizational behavior, and they are critically important for innovation initiatives. Yet, companies give these questions far too little attention. Too often they fail to recognize that what works for ongoing operations will not work for the innovation initiative.
While we will avoid discussing strategy formulation, it IS important to observe, the process by which the case company alters its strategy over time. Does the innovation leader gather timely information on whether the existing strategy is likely to succeed? Is he or she open to changes in strategy when new information suggests that such a change is wise? How do such changes come about? These questions call for an analysis of the planning, budgeting, and performance evaluation systems that the company uses for the innovation initiative.
General Guidelines for Approaching the Cases in This Course
This topic cannot be reduced to a set of rules. I can’t give you a formula for making entrepreneurship / innovation within established organizations work, the same way you can have a formula for calculating ROI. It’s much more subtle, complex, topic. Thus, much of what you take away from this course will derive directly from the case studies themselves.
I recognize that you have limited preparation time, and I want you to spend as much of that time as possible doing the work that really matters – studying and interpreting each case. To that end, I have done what I can to make simple familiarization with case facts as easy as possible by creating strategy overviews, timelines, and case fact summary slides, which I will distribute in advance. You should read each case once quickly to get a feel for it, and then study these handouts to solidify the case facts. Then, take a break. Come back later to read the case a second time, this time much more closely.
The great majority of the cases you study during your MBA are decision cases. To tackle a decision case, you often apply a known framework or method. You draw information from the case study that is relevant (and in many cases eliminate even more information that is not relevant), make a choice, and prepare evidence to back up your choice.
The cases in this course are different. They do do not end with a single, specific choice that you are supposed to analyze. Your task is different. It is not to decide, it is to diagnose. In a diagnostic case, almost all information is relevant. Your job is to come up with your own explanations of what is happening and why. The case studies in this class fall into two categories:
Exemplars. In sessions 1, 2, 4, and 5, we will study companies that have succeeded in executing one innovation initiative or several related ones. Your job is to figure out how they did it. What could another company learn from their example? Even more important, ask yourself what are the limits to the case company’s approach? That is, are there some kinds of innovation initiatives that the case company’s approach would not work for? Thinking about this question is a critical step in preparing for the more difficult case studies we will tackle towards the end of the course.
Stories to Learn From. The remaining cases (sessions 3, 6, 7, 8, and 9) focus in-depth on one innovation initiative. These cases will invite you to put yourself in the shoes of the innovation leader. Some are failure stories. Others illustrate early struggles followed by successful corrective actions.
We will approach these cases much like you study history. Your job is to understand the story in detail, and try to unravel the reasons that the story plays out the way it does. A common questioning approach I use in class is very simple. I will highlight a series of case facts, and ask why each is relevant to the story. How did it have an impact on the flow of events? Be prepared for this type of questioning.
By the way, there are no stupid people in these cases. If you disagree with a decision made by one of the people in the case, your job is not simply to conclude that you would have done something different, but to ask yourself why a smart person would make the decision that they made.Is it connected to their background / experience? Particular pressures that they are under?
In these case studies, pay particular attention to the timeline in the case facts summary that I provide to you. Ask yourself why things happened at the time that they happened. Read between the lines. Constantly ask yourself for explanations of what is happening in the case and why.
The more you ask yourself WHY, the sharper your intuition will be if you find yourself leading an innovation initiative or advising a leader of one. Many, if not most, leaders of major innovation initiatives have never led one before. This class offers you several opportunities to get “virtual” experience. Make the most of them. After Tuck, you play for keeps. Leading an innovation initiative can accelerate your career — or end it.
Requirements
Materials
Attendance Policy
Discussion of case studies in class is the primary learning mechanism in this course. Each student is expected to attend every class. I take attendance by asking students to sign a class roster every session.
This is only a nine-session course. Therefore, I cannot excuse more than one absence during the course, regardless of the reason. For a second absence, I assign a written analysis of the case study discussed in class that day. I cannot assign a course grade other than “incomplete” until you submit the analysis. Each assignment will be graded simply - acceptable or unacceptable.
Regardless of the reasons for absences, I will generally not be able to give a passing grade to a student who misses more than two classes. Thankfully, this has never happened. I would consult with the Dean in such cases.
Grading / Final Exam
Your grade in this course is based almost entirely on a final exam — a three hour, in-class, closed-book, closed-notes, independently-taken, written exam. The exam consists of about fifteen questions that require responses of a few sentences each.
Some questions on the exam will be general in nature, drawn directly from the materials presented in the course and in the assigned readings. Others will ask you about a specific case study that you will receive during the last week of class.
You may spend as much time as you wish reading and analyzing the case study. However, as the questions are all short-answer, preparing a detailed analysis of the case will not help you, nor can you bring any written notes about the case to the exam. (You will receive a new, clean copy of the case with the exam.) You may not discuss the case study with anyone prior to the exam.
Honor Code
I can only think of two ways to run afoul of the Honor Code in this course. The first is falsifying a signature on an attendance sheet. The second is cheating on the exam, such as collaboration of any kind (including any discussion of the case study used in the final exam, which is handed out in advance). My personal view is that students who lack the integrity to follow such simple instructions should not under any circumstances receive a diploma from Tuck.
Class Participation
Learning from case studies is a team sport. We must all work together to learn together. While I recognize that some students are more comfortable speaking than others, I expect at least some participation from all students. In fact, I believe you have an obligation to your fellow students to contribute to the classroom learning experience by sharing your own unique points of view. I am frequently pleasantly surprised when, say, a quiet someone who hasn’t spoken during the first few sessions contributes by connecting the case discussion to their own unique past work experience. Some of the most memorable contributions in past years have come in just such a manner.
You can accelerate your learning most in this class by listening to your classmates. Think about what each is saying. Actively engage in the conversation. Test your own ideas by comparing them to those of your classmates. Be open to different perspectives. Also, be unafraid to challenge your classmates — but always by constructively critiquing the idea, never the person.
I have two roles. One is as a discussion facilitator, the other is as a content expert. In the latter role, I will present frameworks and ideas from my work in this field intermittently throughout the course. At appropriate times in case discussions I will also make my own points-of-view on the case studies clear. Though I have studied this topic for years, I do not expect my viewpoint to be received as gospel. In fact, I respect I respect “constructive skepticism” of my ideas, which can push learning for the entire class further, including my own learning.
Grading
Schedule
Tuesday, Dec 1
CASE STUDY: Continuous Process Improvement at Deere & Company
Fast Company: “Strategy, Execution, and Innovation”
Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System, HBR
Optional: Fast Company: “Our Wish for 2005”
Ten Rules – Introduction and Chapter 1
Wednesday, Dec 2
CASE STUDY: The Thomson Corporation in the Legal Publishing Market:
Expanding the Value Proposition (A) (Tuck Case)
Fast Company: “Planning Not to Learn,”
Fast Company: “Experimentation is Easy, Learning is Not”
Optional: Ten Rules – Chapters 6
Fast Company - “By the Numbers: You Can’t Quantify Learning,”
Thursday, Dec 3
CASE STUDY: Joline Godfrey and the Polaroid Corporation (HBS Case #9-492-037)
Fast Company: “Forget, Borrow, Learn”
Optional: Fast Company: “Ideas are Not Enough”
Fast Company: “A Challenge of Olympic Proportions”
Fast Company: “Is Innovation In Your Organizational DNA?”
Monday, Dec 7
CASE STUDY: Dow Jones & Company: Innovation in Print and Online (A, B, C) (Tuck Cases)
Optional: Fast Company: “Innovation Networks”
Tuesday, Dec 8
CASE STUDY: The John Deere 8030 Tractor (Tuck Case)
Thursday, Dec 10
CASE STUDY: Corning Microarray Technologies (Tuck Case)
Fast Company: “Amnesia by Design”
Tuesday, Dec 15
CASE STUDY: Hasbro Interactive (Tuck Case)
Fast Company: “Shooting for the Moon”
Fast Company: “Reliable Unpredictability”
Optional: Ten Rules – Chapters 2, 3
Wednesday, Dec 16
CASE STUDY: New York Times Digital (Tuck Case)
Fast Company: “Innovation and the Inevitable Break the Rules Backlash”
Optional: Ten Rules, Chapter 7, 8, 9
Fast Company: “Borrow, In Moderation.”
Thursday, Dec 17
CASE STUDY: Analog Devices, Incorporated: Microelectromechanical Systems (Tuck Case)
Barnaby Feder, “A Digital World with Analog as its Workhorse,” New York Times, Aug 9, 2004.
Trimble / Govindarajan, “Building Breakthrough Businesses Within Established Organizations” Harvard Business Review, May 2005.
Friday, Dec 18
Final Exam (TIME TBA)
