Entrepreneurship and Innovation Today

Management of Meaning in Organizations

"Management of Meaning in Organizations"

(international conference organized by International Association of Cross-Cultural
Competence & Management, in partnership with Rotterdam School of Management RSM/EUR and Poznan University College of Business and Foreign Languages PWSBiJO)

Poznan, June 25-26, 2008

and

3 x IN = Inventing + Innovating + Interpreting

Poznan, June 27, 2008

Accompanied by

“Malta 2008”, the annual Poznan International Theatre Festival (June 23-28, 2008)

The Management of Meaning in Organizations

Contemporary flows of immigrants, tourists and professional expats contribute to the emergence of multiculturally patterned interaction chains and to the emergence of a multilayered and negotiable concept of culture as a resource and playground rather than a ready-made software to be installed in individual minds during partially enforced socialization. Some of these patterned interactions will evolve into rituals and institutions, but not all of them, and most will require a continuous investment in maintenance and reengineering of relations and interaction processes.

Most of the professionals expedited by their companies and agencies to far away places are forced to dive into a cultural shock and re-adjustment. They develop their own cultural competence. In order to understand what they are doing and how they cope, we have to start with the study of re-tooling of cultures and subcultures (including the so called national ones managed by state bureaucracies, including ours) and of the consequences of individualization and hybridization of the ongoing process of identity formation, reformation and counterreformation. Studying the revolutionary consequences of reshaping of national cultures under the pressure of accelerated globalization and increase of unmanageable inequalities are at the core of our scientific programme.

3 x IN (Inventing – Innovating – Intrepreting)

Breeding, facilitating and sustaining entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial initiatives requires approaching management as if it was a gerund rather than a noun. Innovating means seeing realities as flows and processes, streams and currents rather than bricks or blocks of organizational structures neatly displayed in solid organi-grams. Non-hierarchic, network-oriented and self-managed-teams-based matrixes of future forms of organizing call for research attention of academic and non-academic communities of practice. Dealing with manageable inequalities, minding and mining diversities or breaking with bureaucratic routines without getting rid of traceable responsibilities – those are the new skills and insights which call for inventions, innovations and continuous self-reflexive interpretations (and re-interpretations, and re-re-interpretations and more). 3 x IN focuses on breeding cross-cultural competence and on eVolving. Competent scanning of organizational windows of opportunities and practical adjustment of managerial narratives and academic discourses to changing realities of postglobalized, de-communized and post-Chindianized interactions are among challenges ahead. Let us start tackling them

A group opf researchers spanning cross-cultural studies, critical management studies and sciences of organization invite you to discuss theoretical landscape of comparatiove studies in cultures and organizations. Selected papers submitted to both conferences will appear in European Journal of International Management, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Journal of Cross-Cultural Competence & Management and International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management. The mission of IACCM members is to promote scholarly work of young scholars in Europe.

For further information contact Peter Odrakiewicz [email protected]

Master Class in Opportunity Recognition for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs; May 30th 2008; University of Toronto

Topics Covered

The Idea Lab-How to generate ideas, innovations  and new business concepts on demand . 

The

Opportunity

Clinic-a systematic rigorous process for anticipating, spotting or designing Opportunity Scenarios before your competition does

Text mining for scientific and technical discovery-How to use the newest data-mining software to discover new patterns that lead to scientific discoveries or technical advances

Lecturer:

Walter Derzko

• Former Director of the Idea Lab, Design Exchange

  Toronto

• Instructor Certificate Program in Innovation and Entrepreneurship,

  University

  of

  Toronto

  , School of Continuing Studies
• Senior Fellow, Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, OCAD,

  Toronto

• President Smart Economy

Who should attend?

• Entrepreneurs who are ready to or have just launched  a new business venture
• Established or serial entrepreneurs who are prepared  to take their business to the next level-a fast growth enterprise.
• Managers (or intrapreneurs) responsible for corporate venturing -an important mechanism for creating innovation and new business in established firms
• Not For Profits and Government
• Scientists turned entrepreneur

What you’ll learn from the Master Class ( Five concrete outcomes)

1. The most common types of unknowns that most businesses face  (ie, ambiguity, uncertainty, complexity etc) and how to effectively deal with each one
2. Which innovation and creativity methods work best, why  and under which circumstances 
3. The six types of change in the business environment that all businesses face and how to turn “change” into opportunity scenarios
4. The most effective opportunity windows for startups, that they don’t talk about in business schools
5. Strategies to kickstart innovation efforts in businesses that don’t feel they need to be innovative  or in copycat businesses that in the past have been content to be quick followers.

Date: May 30^th 2008

Time  1pm to 5pm

Location:

University

of

Toronto

, Downtown, St George Campus,

Woodsworth

College

Residence, Corner of

Bloor St W.

and St George,

Toronto

Parking: Just down the street on St George at the Rotman School of Business

Hotels: Call 416-533-9667 for details

Cost:

$199 prepaid before May 23, 2008 for the general public

$150 prepaid before May 23, 2008 for Smart Economy clients, U of T Innovation or Entrepreneurship Certificate alumni or for students currently  signed up for courses

$250 at the door or after May 23, 2008

Mention other discount codes upon registration ; Discounts for multiple registrations from one firm

Registration:

Call 416-533-9667 or email [email protected] for a registration form

Cancellation Policy: Cancellations received in writing prior to 5:00pm on May 28 will receive a refund less a $50 administration fee per person.  If we do not receive written notice of your cancellation, you will be charged the full amount for this session.  Substitutions are always welcome.

Information:

Call Walter Derzko at 416-533-9667 or 416-819-9667

See http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2008/05/master-class-in.html

"Barriers to Innovation in Home Country: Can Internationalisation of R&D Mitigate their Effects? Special Issue of the International Journal of Technology, Policy and Management (IJTPM)

Dear colleagues,

I would like to draw your attention on the following final call for papers:

Special Issue of the International Journal of Technology, Policy and Management (IJTPM)

Special Issue on: "Barriers to Innovation in Home Country: Can Internationalisation of R&D Mitigate their Effects?"

Guest Editors: Prof.  Cornelius Herstatt, Rajnish Tiwari and Dr. Stephan Buse, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Germany

Submission Deadline: July 31, 2008.

For more details, please see following website:

http://www.inderscience.com/browse/callpaper.php?callID=846

Best regards

Stephan Buse Institute of Technology and Innovation Management Hamburg University of Technology

Entrepreneurs and Smart Negotiations

In our Idea Lab sessions that we conduct with clients, we often see that It's not enough just to develop good novel ideas, but then you have to pitch or sell them, either to your boss or your clients.  That often involves conflict situations and the need for crafty negotiations.

One of the key cognitive skills is the ability to step into your opponents shoes and articulate their "point of view" on the situation. 

But is there experimental data to show that this tactic is better?

According to the May 1st issue of the Economist magazine:

[...]....a team of researchers have come up with some intriguing answers in a series of experiments just published in Psychological Science.

Adam Galinsky of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Illinois, and his colleagues looked at two related approaches often used to understand the opponent in negotiations: perspective-taking and empathy.  Although the terms are often used interchangeably, they are different.  Perspective-taking is the cognitive power to consider the world from someone else's viewpoint, whereas empathy is the power to connect with them emotionally.

They conducted a series of experiments using more than 150 MBA students who had just enrolled on a ten-week course on negotiations—so they were novices.  The students were divided into pairs.  One played the part of the seller of a petrol station and the other the buyer.  They were told to strike a deal, but this could not be done on price alone, because the maximum the buyer was allowed to pay was lower than the seller's reserve price.  So only a creative deal would work (made possible because the seller needed to finance a sailing trip but would later want a job, and the buyer needed to hire managers to run the petrol station).  Just over two-thirds of the pairs managed to reach a deal.  Analysis showed that when the buyer in particular had a perspective-taking ability it could predict a successful outcome.

The experiment was then re-run, with the pairs split into three groups.  In the perspective-taking group the buyers were told to try to understand what the petrol-station owner was thinking and what his interest and purpose was in selling.  The empathy group was told to understand what the seller was feeling and what emotions he might be experiencing.  The third group was a control; the buyers were told simply to concentrate on their own role.  Again, it was the pair with a perspective-taking buyer who were more likely to strike a deal (76%) than the empathisers (54%), followed by the control group (39%).

In a third and different experiment, lots of issues had to be negotiated and trade-offs made, with one student playing the role of a job candidate and the other a recruiter (with the recruiters randomly assigned as perspective-takers, empathisers or a control).  In terms of a joint gain, 40% of the pairs with a perspective-taking recruiter scored maximum points; 22% of the empathisers did and 12% of the control group.  However, in terms of an individual gain, the perspective-taking recruiters did far better—pushing the empathetic recruiters into last place.

What this shows is that even with one negotiator having perspective-taking abilities it can produce a better overall outcome for both sides.  “You want to understand what the other side's interests are, but you do not want to sacrifice your own interests,” says Dr Galinksy.  “A large amount of empathy can actually impair the ability of people to reach a creative deal.”

Family Business models in different cultural regions- Book announcement

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to announce the publication of the eleven volume set, Culturally Sensitive Models of Family Business.  This Compendium uses GLOBE's ten cultural clusters of the world (Anglo Region, Confucian Asia, Eastern Europe, Germanic Europe, Latin America, Latin Europe, Middle East, Nordic Europe, Southern Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa) to address the commonality as well as differences in family businesses around the world.  While a growing body of knowledge about different cultures exists, it tends to be centered on a few cultures (e.g., Anglo) and is dispersed throughout a wide array of publication outlets.  The purpose of this Compendium is to examine and highlight the various cultures from around the world in one single resource to make it readily accessible to scholars, students, and practitioners.  A special volume on gender in family business rounds out the set.

"The Compendium is a timely and major contribution.  It is a great resource for scholars and students interested in understanding the diversity and uniqueness of family firms around the world.  Family business practitioners and policy makers seeking to enhance global collaborations and creating sustainable families, communities, and businesses will find this an invaluable resource."  Pramodita Sharma, Ph.D. Associate Dean of Business and Professor of Family Business Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

"As an integral first phase for a broader research program, C.A.S.E. (Culturally-Sensitive Assessment System and Education), it offers comparative cultural analysis of family businesses and culturally-sensitive tools to create more successful families, businesses, and communities worldwide."  Joseph Horak, Ph.D. Horak Family and Psychological Services, President, C.A.S.E. Worldwide Group, L.L.C., USA

The Compendium is intended to open a new stream of inquiry in the growing field of family business.  We encourage you to share this information about the Compendium and the caseworldwide.com ( http://caseworldwide.com/ )site with your colleagues and contacts.  In addition, please ask the library of your institution to order a full set of the Compendium.

You may order the full 11-set Compendium at a discounted rate of $240.

Additional copies of each volume can be purchased for $25 per volume.

Sincerely,

The Editorial Team,

Vipin Gupta ([email protected]) Nancy Levenburg ([email protected]) Lynda Moore ([email protected]) Jaideep Motwani ([email protected]) Thomas Schwarz ([email protected])