Afterword

As we look back at our experiences with disruptive innovation from our viewpoints as investors, advisors, educators, and leaders, consistent hurdles stand out. Historically, companies were formed around a singular innovation—they were able to do something different, better, faster, or cheaper than the competition. After the market supported the innovation, the company tended to focus on developing incremental improvements and optimizing the innovation for maximum monetization and eventually profit. Risk aversion impacts organizational structure. Indeed, organizational structure...and behavior...morph into organizational stricture, often with a focus on reduced risk and uncertainty. The consequence is that the organization cannot easily discover new ideas and formulate new value propositions in a manner that is easily integrated into the optimization machine. To be successful with disruptive innovation, the organization needs to dedicate thought, time, and space to the discovery of new opportunity spaces and formulation of new value propositions. We have found that most companies successful with disruptive innovation have a cultural support of innovation teams and well-integrated leadership to nurture new ideas and then to move them from the discovery and formulation stages into development and optimization to continually redefine the company’s leadership position in the market. This perspective is supported by the recent McKinsey Global Study on innovation structures, which found that “where innovation is fully integrated into strategy, executives are six times as likely as those without integrated strategy to say their separate functions meet their financial objectives effectively.”¹

At Philadelphia University the President consistently used his bully pulpit to support and reinforce the Provost office as a shelter in which to discover and formulate the new curriculum and organizational structure for the Kanbar College of Design, Engineering and Commerce. We incubated the early ideas with key faculty partners, fellows, and advisors and tested ideas through charrettes and learning launches with students and broader faculty. After the curriculum architecture was sketched out, we built curriculum development teams composed of diverse sets of faculty and administration to develop the curriculum and make it their own, and brought in new deans to lead the new organizational structure. This method worked well in an academic environment where building consensus is essential.

Today, we witness companies stumble in their innovation initiatives as the tension between maximizing the known opportunities of the day pulls against the efforts for formulating the value propositions for the new tomorrow. We believe that the key to a successful balance lies in a cultural understanding of innovation as a core competency, organizational structure that facilitates rather than obfuscates, dedicated time and effort, and integrated leadership.