Entrepreneurship and Innovation Today

Action-based research in teaching strategy

From a recent post on a Strategy-as-Practice list

"...  as soon as I became one of the faculty (University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics, Croatia, Europe) I realized that students are bored and not interested in subject of strategic management, business people are not willing to collaborate with University and teachers lack the real business issues. 

One of the suggestions that I came across in USA (George Washington University) was service learning/community based learning or action based research.  It got my attention and last semester I implemented the project in the strategic management course. 

The results were very surprising.  I found three firms (trade, tourism and internet portal industry) that worked together with the students on a real-time projects in the firm.  The semester long project was actually implementation of strategic management issues (implementation, repositioning on the market, brand awareness activities) that students with zero days of experience and very little background in strategic management( there were studying simultaneously with the implementation in the firm)found very challenging. 

I found that the practice is shared in both directions.  The owners of the firm/top managers working with students shared their ways of strategic thinking, ways they do business while students offered a fresh and out of the ordinary perspective on the firm.  Owners/top managers were surprised and this experience opened for them some new windows...

The next step is to implement this for some non-profit firms and on the MBA level students. 

I am just at the process of writing insights and reflection on this very first- year service learning implementation and wonder if someone has more experience with the teaching methodology?  This way of teaching demands for extra hours, but the connection firm-university-students are extraordinary. 

Best regards, Lara Jelenc [email protected]

Is the Tipping Point Toast? Are Influentials or Complementors no better then everyday people?

Issue/ Problem?

Marketers spend a billion dollars a year targeting influentials.  Are they getting their bang for the buck?

Reality?

Columbia University prof Duncan Watts says they're wasting their money.

" Yet, if you believe Watts, all that money and effort is being wasted.  Because according to him, Influentials have no such effect.  Indeed, they have no special role in trends at all.

In the past few years, Watts--a network-theory scientist who recently took a sabbatical from Columbia University and is now working for Yahoo --has performed a series of controversial, barn-burning experiments challenging the whole Influentials thesis.  He has analyzed email patterns and found that highly connected people are not, in fact, crucial social hubs.  He has written computer models of rumor spreading and found that your average slob is just as likely as a well-connected person to start a huge new trend.  And last year, Watts demonstrated that even the breakout success of a hot new pop band might be nearly random.  Any attempt to engineer success through Influentials, he argues, is almost certainly doomed to failure."

Watts has developed a new technique for propagating ads virally, which can double or even quadruple the reach of an ordinary online campaign by harnessing the pass-around power of everyday people--and ignoring Influentials altogether.

"As Watts argues, there are a lot of ways an Influential could convert the masses.  Merely talking to a friend once could infect her with an idea.  Or it might take several conversations.  Or maybe Influentials are so persuasive they're like trend vampires, and each victim they bite becomes hyperpersuasive too.  Depending on how you define the specific mechanics of influence, you'd get totally different types of epidemics--or maybe none at all.  But gurus of the Influentials theory never directly clarify these mechanics.

"All they'll ever say," Watts insists, is that a) there are people who are more influential than others, and b) they are disproportionately important in getting a trend going."

Full story here>>[...]

RfI-Strategic planning and firm performance in small firms (SME's)

Request for Information (RfI)

Dear Colleagues,

We are completing a meta-analysis on the relationship between strategic planning and firm performance in small firms.  We are seeking unpublished (or in press) manuscripts or data (including doctoral dissertations) from studies that assess the relationship between strategic planning and firm performance in small firms.

Our meta-analytic study submits the question: what is the relationship between strategic planning and firm performance in small firms?  The present research builds on the foundation created by Schwenk and Schrader (1993) who first used meta-analytic techniques to examine the relationship between strategic planning and performance in small firms.  A great deal of research has focused on the relationship between strategic planning and performance in small firms in the years since Schwenk and Schrader (1993) analyzed studies completed prior to 1990.

We hope our meta-analysis will both bring some degree of clarity to the extant literature and provide insights that will direct future research.  If you have relevant data we would appreciate the opportunity to include the findings in our meta-analysis. 

Please contact Jeffrey Pollack at [email protected] through December 2007.

Very Best Regards,

Jeffrey Pollack (Virginia Commonwealth University);

Jeffrey M. Pollack VCU School of Business- Department of Management 1015 Floyd Avenue, PO Box 844000 Richmond, VA 23284-4000 Cell Number: (804) 397-0818 [email protected]

CfP's Duke Strategy Conference, Durham, North Carolina, April 4-5, 2008

The inaugural Duke Strategy Conference will bring together leading scholars and practitioners in the field of Strategy.  The conference will be held in Durham on the afternoon of Friday, April 4, and on Saturday, April 5, 2008.  The conference is being sponsored by the Strategy Area of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.

The conference will adopt an innovative format that brings together senior practitioners with academic scholars.  Each session will feature the presentation of original research by its authors along with a discussion of this research by other scholars.  In addition, corporate discussants will highlight practical implications of the academic research and identify open questions that further research could address.

We welcome paper submissions on business and industry change over time, including specific topics such as entrepreneurship, corporate change, technological advance, industry evolution, and policy development.

PAPER SELECTION PROCESS

Papers should be well developed, but at a stage where they can still benefit from the group's discussion.  Preference will be given to recent papers that have not been presented at major conferences.  Lodging expenses for presenters will be covered.

Papers will be selected by faculty members from Duke University.

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE

Please submit an electronic version of your paper (PDF format) through the conference web page no later than Friday, January 4, 2008.

Http://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/areas/strategy/duke_strategy_conference.html

Paper selection will be finalized by February 1, 2008.

Please address questions to Michael Lenox at [email protected] or Will Mitchell at [email protected]

Why Tiger Woods' Putter May Not be Right for You

Take a look inside the average North American household and you're likely to find high-tech electronic equipment, sports gear and kids' toys far too complicated for their owners' use.

Consumers often buy unsuitable products because they base purchase decisions on their perceived, rather than actual, abilities says a University of Michigan business professor.

This comes as no surprise to Katherine Burson, an assistant professor of marketing at Michigan's Ross School of Business.

"Consumers attempt to use self-assessments as a guide for what products to buy, but they have little idea of how their skills and abilities compare to those of other consumers," Burson said.  "That means when people choose products designed for particular skill levels, they often do not get what they intended to buy."

She says consumers too often assume that product manufacturers produce different levels of options---beginner, intermediate or advanced---for people of different skill levels.

"They mistakenly believe that all that's necessary is to determine their own skill level compared to others," Burson said.  "Unfortunately, accurate self-assessment is actually quite difficult for most people."

In a recent article published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Burson examines how manipulating the difficulty of a task given to a group of consumers leads to changes in their perceptions of their relative abilities and, consequently, in their choice of products.

In the first of two experiments, 55 participants were asked to putt golf balls on an indoor putting green.  Half of the subjects putted a golf ball from 10 feet from the cup and the other half putted from three feet.  Those who putted a shorter distance (easy task) not only were able to sink more balls but also thought they were better golfers in general than those putting a long distance (hard task)---despite the obvious ease or difficulty of the putts.

Furthermore, the participants used these biased self-assessments as a cue for product choice.  The three-foot putters thought they should buy higher-end golf balls, compared with the 10-foot putters who selected lower-quality golf balls.

Burson explored this phenomenon further in a second experiment in which 46 participants were given an eight-item, multiple-choice quiz about photography.  Half of them answered tricky questions while the others answered simple questions.  The inability of the first group to answer many quiz questions led them to believe they were below-average photographers, and to prefer lower-tier digital cameras.  The second group, which easily answered most of the quiz questions, inferred they were above-average photographers, and preferred more advanced cameras.

Burson's results are especially significant because consumers of all skill levels appear to be equally susceptible to this bias.

"As retailers race to improve the in-store experience for consumers by providing opportunities to try out products, they may unintentionally be misleading customers about their relative standings," she said.  "For instance, in a sporting goods store, the climbing wall is certainly smaller and easier to scale than a real mountain, and the putting green is flatter and shorter than an actual golf course."

"My research suggests that if these trials are fairly easy, retailers may inadvertently encourage inflated perceptions of ability among their customers.  The consequences of these misperceptions could range from frustration to actual physical injury."

Researchers recommend that retailers take care to assess the true standing and the right products for their customers before ringing up sales

Source: University of Michigan Press Release: Tue 09-Oct-2007,

Choice overload and Consumer Fatigue

Consumer choice has reached critical mass, and the backlash is around the bend, states an article titled "Profiting from mega-trends" in the Journal of Product & Brand Management

“Unlimited choice can produce genuine suffering,” says Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: How More Is Less."

“Infinite consumer choice has proven to affect sales adversely.  A series of studies, called “When choice is demotivating,” compared the buying habits of two groups of consumers in a gourmet food store.  Group A was given six jams to sample, while Group B was given 24.  At the cash register, 30 percent of Group A made a purchase, compared to only 3 percent of Group B (Iyengar and Lepper, 2000)." 

According to Schwartz, as choice increases, so does the effort required to decide, and many consumers decide not to decide. 

Choice overload is driving consumers to seek expert advice to help sort things out – whether it is which skin care products to buy or navigating a career path. 

• What is “just the right” amount of choice? 
• And who will be the most credible “expert” to deliver “just the right” answers? 
• A wrong choice could encourage your targets to look elsewhere.

Source: Profiting from mega-trends by Dave Florin, Barry Callen, Sean Mullen and Jeane Kropp Hiebing, Madison, Wisconsin, USA;  Journal of Product & Brand Management Volume 16 · Number 4 · 2007 · 220–225

ModeMapping

All business textbooks tell entrepreneurs to observe customers to look for problems that can be turned into opportunity windows. But there aren't that many tools or software programs to help you spot patterns.

Business Week profiles a tool called Mode Mapping, -- a new, smart software tool developed by Stuart Karten Design in Marina del Ray, Calif.  It won a 2006 IDEA Silver Award in research.

It’s a visualization tool that tracks the state of mind of various consumers over time so designers can see patterns, by using a colorcoding system of categorizing these states of mind, or “modes.” How does Mode Mapping work? Designers identify and then color code patterns of consumer behavior to look for shared experiences — and then use these observations to suggest innovative new solutions that will appeal to customers. This creates a topography of sorts of consumer activities as well as how they are thinking and feeling during those activities.

See Business Week Blog >> [...]

Smart computerized measures of "executive intelligence" to predict who will excel in a managerial role

Predicting Managerial Success

Psychologists from the University of Toronto, Harvard University, the University of Hawaii and McGill University have used new computerized measures of "executive intelligence" to predict who will excel in a managerial role or in a competitive academic environment.

The research findings, published in the last issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (August 2007), demonstrate that men and women who do exceptionally well at tasks assessing the cognitive functions of the prefrontal cortex - often described as the "executive" of the brain - obtain high ratings of managerial competence from their supervisors or high grades in a competitive university environment.

Study authors note that good prefrontal or executive function allows individuals to:

• manipulate many ideas simultaneously,
• to plan for the future,
• to avoid impulsive actions and
• to react thoughtfully to novel situations. 

"These abilities, described for decades by neuroscientists as 'executive functions', are clearly relevant to managerial and high-level academic performance," says Jordan Peterson, psychology professor at the University of Toronto and senior author of the paper.

"We took the description literally and started to apply executive function tests to normal people in practical environments."

"In the past, psychologists have used IQ and personality tests to predict managerial and academic performance, with real success," notes Peterson.  "However, this is the first demonstration of the unique potential of prefrontal or executive function tests to more accurately determine who will and who will not excel." 

Previously, such tests have been used strictly for experimental purposes by neuropsychologists and cognitive scientists.

Peterson and co-author Robert Pihl of McGill University first started using tests of executive function in the late 1980s to assess impulse control and decision-making among aggressive and alcohol-abusing teenagers.  Harvard Ph.D. candidate and lead author Daniel Higgins, who is also an engineer, realized the potential of these tests for more general applications and developed computer technology to make their administration efficient and cost-effective, partnering with physician Alice Lee of the University of Hawaii. 

"After the tasks were programmed, we started predicting academic achievement at Harvard, replicated those findings at the University of Toronto and then moved into the business environment," states Peterson.

Using formulas derived by Frank Schmidt (Iowa U) and John Hunter of (Michigan State), the studies' authors were able to estimate the potential productivity gain associated with using executive function tests as predictors of performance.  Peterson says that because people differ widely in their individual abilities, even a small degree of accuracy in testing can produce significant economic gains.  In the present study, the tests were accurate beyond that small degree.  In fact, Schmidt and Hunter's formulas indicate that the addition of executive function tests to unstandardized interviews would result in productivity gain of 33 per cent per hired employee ($25,000/year per $75,000 of salary). 

"Obviously, gains of this magnitude cannot be easily ignored," says Peterson.  "Neuroscience has revolutionized our understanding of the brain in recent years.  Perhaps this is the beginning of the neuroscience revolution in management."

© 2005-2007 

Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Walter Derzko teaches at the Certificate Program on Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies, which starts in the Fall of 2007

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko"
• .......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead
• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

The Future Just Ain't what is used to be?

Are entrepreneurs and business people scared off by futurists and strategic planners? and their version of the future?

While research material for a Futures project for a client last week, I ran across this well-written anecdote.

Irving Buchan posses the question in a witty humorous article called Finding time for the future and overcoming future avoidance, in Foresight Vol 7(6) pp-3-7 (2005)

He writes in one section:

… Far from eliciting the self-righteous indignation of futurists and strategic planners about not being listened to, futurists perhaps need to recognize that it is partly or largely their fault.

There is complicity here.  We are not totally innocent.  Indeed, we scare people.  We often browbeat or scold audiences or students on their short-sighted myopia.  We breathlessly trot out a barrage of trends that are overwhelming and intimidating.  We impatiently leap ahead to a future which is so totally discontinuous from the present and worse from past futures that it reads like the science fiction profile of an extra-terrestrial civilization.  In short, inadvertently perhaps futurists may have given the future a bad name or rap.  In the process, we also inadvertently may be creating or widening a futures gap which ironically is our task to bridge.

To be sure it is partly excusable.  The future we faithfully portray is often diabolically disruptive.  For example, it generally has wrecked the basic assumptions of strategic planning.  Many constants are now variables.  Narrow parameters have been forced to be more inclusive, even global.  The planning environment itself has been made so complex and volatile that only computer modeling and simulation offers mastery.  Risk analysis and management has been factored in and in the process compelled planning to be at least fifty percent contingency.  Early warning sensors have been introduced to such an extent that planning in many cases is largely a lit-up 24/7 monitoring screen.  The net result is the embarrassment of generating contingency plans which define the long term as six months.  It is like the oxymoron of another futures creation: crisis management."

Blind Spots or Why Smart People do Dumb Things Part 1

I’m sure most of us have been in a similar circumstance...

"When our son-in-law Salvador visited the United States for the first time, we drove around my hometown to show him a little of Middle America. Nearing my bank, I remembered that I needed some cash and entered the lane for the ATM machine. While we waited for the transaction to be processed, I gestured towards the monitor and said to Salvador: “We’ve become more sensitive to the needs of handicapped people in the United States. See the instructions here in Braille?” I waited a moment while his wife Kalyn translated what I had said, feeling a bit smug. I was proud of the sensitivity that this feature of our bank demonstrated. Salvador murmured something in Spanish, and then he and Kalyn burst out laughing. Miffed, I waited to hear what was so funny. Then Kalyn translated: “Salvador just wondered how many blind drivers you have here in Elmhurst.”

The Braille instructions that I had been pointing out with such pride just moments earlier now appeared totally idiotic. Even as I grasped for straws, offering the idea that a sighted driver could be driving a blind individual to the bank, deep down I knew that it made little sense to have Braille instructions on equipment at a drive-through facility. I felt stupid for not having seen how foolish those instructions were in this setting and for touting them as evidence of our cultural superiority. Salvador’s point was glaringly obvious. How could I have missed it?"

Source: Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Blind Spots, Why Smart People do Dumb Things. 2007

I ran into a similar but reverse situation. While in the subway system of a foreign capital about ten years ago, I was waiting for the next train to arrive. Looking down the platform, I noticed the digital clock that was running backwards. My first immediate thought was My ! My ! how backward of a country this is. They can’t even tell time right!!... till I noticed when the clock hit zero, low and behold the train arrived. At that point I felt really stupid and I was so glad that I didn't publicly point it out to anyone.

When have you been "blind spotted" by the obvious?

Post your example in the comments section below

Source: "15 blind spots that most start-up entrepreneurs encounter" in the Certificate program in Entrepreneurship & Innovation; University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies, St George Campus.

© 2005-2007 Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Walter Derzko teaches at the Certificate Program on Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies, which starts in the Fall of 2007

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko"
• .......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead
• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page