Executing Corporate Innovation for Senior Executives

Hi. My name is Jeremy Hutchison-Krupat, I’m an Associate Professor in Innovation and Operations Management. The research and teaching I do is all centred around how to get organisations, large and small — large established organisations, nascent entrepreneurial organisations — how do we innovate more effectively?

The Executing Corporate Innovation for Senior Executives programme is really geared towards people that have the ability, responsibility, and authority to make changes within their organisation — not just leadership changes, but changes that affect the structure, changes that affect the processes, change that affect how your organisation can be most effective at implementing its strategic objectives as they relate to innovation.

Executing Corporate Innovation for Senior Executives is aimed at people who are grappling with decisions around, how do I structure my organisation? What sort of processes should I have in place? How do I provide the correct incentives?

Also, given the processes in place, given the structures in place, given the incentives, given the culture within our organisation, what’s the impact this has on our ability to innovate? How can I diagnose problems, and how can I remedy problems?

In this programme, a natural starting point is to figure out, where are the fundamental tensions that underlie the organisation’s ability to effectively execute innovation? Fundamentally, there’s a tension between efficiency and innovation.

But we want to understand what drives this. So we start to unpack it and look at the organisational structure.

How are different organisational structures, and importantly, decisions we make associated with organisational structure, how do these ultimately impact our ability to innovate?

Same with processes. We put processes in place, often to help with communication, help with information transfer, help us innovate more effectively. But what are the trade-offs associated with these processes?

Likewise with incentives, incentives are aimed at getting people to do the right behaviours. But there are trade-offs. When we put all of these together, how do they impact our organisation’s ability to generate innovation, generate ideas?

How do they impact our ability, our organisation’s ability, to select which initiatives we pursue? And finally, how do they affect our organisation’s ability to execute on those innovations?

When it comes to a programme about executing innovation and a programme that highlights the difference between efficiency and innovation, that highlights the difference between established organisations and nascent, nimble, agile organisations, there’s no more credible place than Cambridge.

If you want to talk about a location that steeped in tradition, steeped in being an established organisation, yet on the other side is innovative, entrepreneurial, creative, at the leading edge of technology, there’s absolutely no better place than Cambridge.

One of the most valuable things in this programme is hearing from participants, hearing from participants in terms of the challenges you face, and also the challenges you’ve solved. Look forward to seeing you here in Cambridge on this programme.