Innovation for Growth: Strategies and Best Practices

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Wharton Executive Education
Dates Location Tuition
- Innovation for Growth: Strategies and Best Practices
Philadelphia
$8,000
- Innovation for Growth: Strategies and Best Practices
Philadelphia
$8,000

This program was formerly called Growing the Top Line: Full-Spectrum Innovation Strategies.

Growth — solid organic growth — depends on innovation. Yet the kind of innovation that drives sustainable growth is much broader than the disruptive "eureka" moments of technology legends. Profitable innovation is a dynamic process of continually creating new business models, improving customer experience, and opening new markets — as well as launching new products.

This innovative workshop gives you a full-spectrum view of innovation — and a challenging environment in which to test and adapt your strategies. Bring your current challenges and opportunities to Wharton, and explore them with thought-leading faculty such as George Day and Paul Schoemaker, who wrote the ground-breaking books Decision Traps, Market-Driven Strategy, and Peripheral Vision. Try new innovation frameworks from Larry Huston, Vice President of Innovation of Procter & Gamble and the creator of the company's much-celebrated Connect and Develop innovation strategy.

These innovation leaders will help you capitalize on the sweet spot between emerging trends, organizational capabilities, and unmet market needs. You'll discover new ways to reach outside your own labs and tap into the best ideas anywhere in the world. You'll use an "Innovation Toolkit" to design a flexible innovation process that lets your company quickly adapt to, and profit from, changes in customers, competitors, or markets. And you'll take this flexible Toolkit with you so you can use it with your team to fire up your innovation processes and improve your organization's "innovation DNA."

Tuition for Philadelphia programs includes lodging and meals. Prices are subject to change. Program Consultants are available to provide more information on course specifics and discuss how this program might meet your needs. Please contact them by e-mail or by telephone at +1 215.898.1776. Plan your stay.


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The program's workshop approach gives you hands-on experience in redesigning both the "what" and the "how" of innovation in your organization. Through group dialogs, interactive lectures, case studies, and projects drawn from your own company, you'll gain insights and perspectives from world-class faculty and an accomplished group of fellow innovation leaders from around the globe. You'll gain inside access to the latest best practices — from innovative companies such as P&G, as well as research from Wharton's Mack Center for Technological Innovation, which leads one of the largest ongoing research projects on managing emerging technologies. Faculty provide perspectives on developing market-driven strategy, understanding new-product development successes and failures, improving "peripheral vision" to sense emerging opportunities, and engaging in value innovation to capitalize on new market space.

Innovation for Growth: Strategies and Best Practices Session Topics

  • Market-Driven Innovation
  • Peripheral Vision: Detecting Market Signals
  • Scenario Planning: Profiting From Uncertainty
  • The New Strategy of Connect and Develop
  • Discovery Through Deliberate Mistakes
  • Innovation Systems: New-Product Development
  • Value Innovation: Finding New Market Space

Related Articles on Driving Corporate Growth

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Podcast

Innovation Networks: Looking for Ideas Outside the Company
According to Larry Huston, managing partner of consulting firm 4INNO, future competitive advantage will depend on "innovation networks" -- individuals and organizations outside a company that can help it solve problems and find new ideas for creating growth. A senior fellow at Wharton's Mack Center for Technological Innovation, Huston was vice president of knowledge and innovation for many years at Procter & Gamble, where he was the architect of its Connect + Develop program, an approach that helped extend the company's innovation process to include 1.5 million people outside of P&G. Huston spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about how innovation networks function

Program Logistics

The program officially begins on Monday morning and will conclude with lunch on Thursday. Hotel accommodations are provided Sunday through Wednesday evenings.

This program is designed for leaders who are responsible for driving top-line growth and promoting innovation — including strategy leaders, managers of new businesses, chief innovation officers, chief technology officers, and product development leaders. Given the diverse perspectives of the program, it will offer fresh approaches to managers in many different areas, including marketing, technology, and sales.

We encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to leverage the application and value of the program. Additional group benefits are available when four or more participants attend a program.

This program offers a multidisciplinary view of successful innovation, from specific tools for immediate application to broader insights that will challenge the way you design innovation processes. With both market and technology perspectives, it will help you focus on innovations that deliver the most value to customers to generate the most value for your firm. Through this program, you will:

  • Better target your innovation resources and improve your innovation processes to achieve the most impact.
  • Develop a broad, well-grounded view of innovation that goes beyond products and technology into organizational issues plus the design of innovation ecologies.
  • Gain a toolkit of diverse approaches and best practices for encouraging innovation, including value innovation and "Connect and Develop" strategies.
  • Rethink your "innovation DNA" to architect and lead innovation across your organization.

undefined GEORGE S. DAY, PhD
Faculty Director
Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor, Professor of Marketing
Co-Director, Mack Center for Technological Innovation
Director, Emerging Technologies Management Research Program
The Wharton School

George Day began as a market development engineer with a major plastics maker and has been deeply involved in management of new products since. For 10 years he was academic director of the product planning program at the GE company. His current areas of research are marketing, organic growth strategies, strategic planning, organizational change, and competitive strategies in global markets. Dr. Day is the author of 15 books in the areas of marketing and strategic management, his most recent being Strategy from the Outside In: How to Profit from Customer Value (with Christine Moorman). He has received all of the major awards in the field of marketing.
Roch Parayre, PhD ROCH PARAYRE, PhD
Learning Director
Fellow, Aresty Institute of Executive Education
Managing Director, Decision Strategies International, Inc.

Roch Parayre is a senior partner and scenario-planning expert with Decision Strategies International, a consulting firm specializing in strategy. He teaches executives at the Wharton School, at CEDEP/INSEAD in France, and for the Institute of Management Studies. He has consulted with many of the Global 1,000 companies (including 3Com, Abbott Laboratories, Alcatel, American Airlines, American Re-Insurance, BASF, Baxter Healthcare, Bethlehem Steel, Brunswick Corporation, Cargill, Chubb, Citgo, Coca Cola, The Conservation Fund, Disney, EDS, Entergy, Givaudan, GlaxoSmithKline, Investors Group, J&J, Knight Ridder, Litton Industries, Lucent Technologies, Marathon Oil, MCI, Medtronic, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, New York Life, PNC Bank, Progress Software, and Texas Instruments) and has led executive education seminars on the topics of decision making, scenario planning, creativity, and strategy. He was previously on the faculty at the Cox School of Business at SMU, where he won numerous MBA teaching awards. He holds a PhD in business strategy from the University of British Columbia, a master's degree in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University, and an undergraduate degree in operations research and mathematics magna cum laude from the University of Ottawa.
undefined LARRY HUSTON
Managing Director, 4INNO
Former Vice President of Innovation, Procter & Gamble

When he was at P&G, Larry Huston led the company's "Connect and Develop" strategy that sourced 50 percent of the company's new product and service innovations from outside P&G. This business model approach to innovation has been commented on extensively by the business press and was featured in his article with Nabil Sakkab in Harvard Business Review ("Connect and Develop," March 2006). Huston's experience at P&G includes creating the CEO's Innovation Leadership Team, serving as innovation leader for P&G's $14 billion Global Fabric and Homecare business, and creating and leading P&G's new "Discontinuity Bootcamp" operation, an approach for creating disruptive innovations. He also led the effort to implement a transnational innovation model at P&G which led to a dramatic reduction in global launch speeds around the world.
ulrich-karl KARL T. ULRICH, ScD
Vice Dean of Innovation
CIBC Professor of Operations and Information Management
The Wharton School

Karl Ulrich is professor of operations and information management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His research activities are focused on product design and development, including work with Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, Polaroid, United Technologies, and Eastman-Kodak. His current projects study the management of product variety, with particular emphasis on the relationships among product architecture, market strategy, and production process design. Professor Ulrich has been a member of development teams for more than 30 new products or processes, including medical devices, tools, computer peripherals, food products, and sporting goods. As a result of this development work, he has been granted 18 patents. From 1999-2002, while on leave from Wharton, he founded and managed Nova Cruz Products, a manufacturer of high-performance personal transportation products.
Wessel DAVID WESSELS, PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Finance
The Wharton School

Professor David Wessels is a director of Executive Education at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Named by BusinessWeek as one of the nation's top business school instructors, David teaches courses on corporate valuation, investment banking, and venture capital to undergraduates, MBAs, and executives in Philadelphia and San Francisco. He has been recognized by his students with the school's top MBA teaching award and recognized nationally for his research on organizational structure and financial performance. His book, Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies, co-authored with McKinsey & Company partners Tim Koller and Marc Goedhart, is a standard text for corporate valuation.

In addition to his teaching on campus, Professor Wessels serves on the executive development and training faculties at Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Lockheed Martin, McKinsey & Company, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Siemens, and UPS.

Before joining Wharton, David served on finance faculty of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Prior to Emory, he was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company and a technology analyst for Boston-based Harbourvest Venture Partners. David holds a PhD in finance from the Anderson School at UCLA, a BS in economics and a BAS in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania.

"The Innovation program was exceptional. It has allowed me to put structure and process around innovation. I have used the scenario planning several times and received great feedback from my team. It was simple, quick and extremely effective."
— Jackie Larson, VP of Operations, accounts receivables management firm

"The Innovation program was one of the best executive education seminars I have attended. It included big picture conceptual discussion to challenge executives to think beyond their existing innovation process, and also specific tools to evaluate your portfolio. I have used several of the tools to highlight strategic issues with our senior management team. In addition to good program content, the presenters were excellent, and responsive to the program attendees."
— David VerNooy, Vice President, RDE, consumer products firm

"The Innovation course provided me with several key insights that have been useful in filling out our innovation pipeline. We have been able to invigorate mature products with fresh, new looks at markets where they might be utilized. As a result we have an entire new business area. The tools brought back from the Innovation program were critical to identification of these peripheral opportunities. We were missing some obvious opportunities!!
I can't say enough about the post course materials and follow up; it is truly an impressive program all around. I look forward to taking more Executive Education courses at Wharton in the future."
— Alan Pape, Business Development Manager, Sartomer Company

"The Innovation program helped me and my company gain a better understanding of how to target innovation resources and improve processes to achieve the most impact (ROI). It instills a grounded view of innovation that goes beyond products and technology into organizational issues plus the design of innovation across our business.
All facets of the program were exemplary, starting with a great introduction by George Day and Roche Parayre. Content by guest speakers such as Larry Huston created a unique perspective on how to make innovation really feasible. Finally, the back-end Innovation Portal has given students and teachers the added value of extending conversations and exploration of Innovation beyond the week and the classroom. I recommend that anyone interested in Innovation take this outstanding program."
— Stephen Lines, Program Director, AstraZeneca

"The Innovation program provided a comprehensive deep dive into the what, where, when, and how to do innovation in a tidy, compact package. The tools, speakers, and facilitators offered fresh perspectives into this growth driver for business. Perhaps the greatest impact involved consideration of The Who. Anyone can innovate in an organization, but depending on 'who' the innovator is determines the process necessary to go from an idea to an application. That exploration gave me as a learner the direction I needed to implement new models in the day to day work."
— Fortune 500 Media Executive

"Having done my PhD in the US and currently living in Europe (Portugal) and working for an International Management Consultancy Company, this was just a great programme. In three days I was able to establish a network of contacts extremely useful for my daily activities in the innovation field. I also acquired a deeper understanding of the innovation concept. The course also has some very interesting practical examples. Is definitely worth taking it!!"
— Sara Medina, Member of the Board, SPI

"Excellent program. The Innovation program provided me with the necessary concepts and tools that I could take back to our organization and begin using immediately. There was a great balance between practice and theory and a solid mix of credible professors and industry experts."
— Todd Leight, Director of Marketing and Sales, TEI Biosciences

"Having had access to world leading innovations research and researchers gave me insights which I did not think was possible in such short period of time. Growing the Top Line: Full-Spectrum Innovation Strategies broadened my perspectives on innovation and provided me the strategic tools and language which have served as key contributions to the innovation strategy work at Sony Ericsson."
— Susanna Bill, Innovation Manager, Sony Ericsson

"Innovation itself is a quickly evolving area, and innovation courses should continue to evolve and challenge the old techniques. The fact that uncertainty or 'black swan' logic is incorporated into the mix here is a promising sign that this course, and more importantly this school, is itself innovative. NICE JOB!!"
— Jay Lawson, VP/GM Stryker Craniomaxillofacial, Stryker

James Cowan is president of Neutrik USA, a subsidiary of Neutrik AG, the world leader in the design, manufacture, and marketing of audio, coaxial, power, and circular connectors. Although the parent company maintained that its top priority was to anticipate and fulfill future market needs, Cowan learned by coming to Wharton that his company's approach was not working. "We weren't listening to the needs of the market. Since we had an engineering-driven environment we assumed that we knew what the market needed, and then we would force those ideas onto the customers. I realized when I attended this program that if we continued to follow our current model, we wouldn't maintain growth."

When Cowan returned to his company, he presented many of the ideas he learned during the program to the board of directors, who enthusiastically embraced them. "As a direct result of attending Wharton's outstanding course and sharing its valuable lessons, we created a director of marketing position at our headquarters in Europe. Our new marketing director is providing greater focus on growing the company based on its core strengths. We're now reaching those in our market who didn't know about our products or our company."

Cowan strongly recommends Innovation for Growth: Strategies and Best Practices. "Not only did it give me the insights I needed to see what had to be changed, but the program taught me strategies for creating solutions. As a result, my company is much better positioned to maintain growth."

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