Executive Education

Program offered jointly with IMD

Description

• How do the most successful innovators generate more than their fair share of smart ideas?
• How do they unleash the creative talent of their people?
• How do they move ideas through their organizations and supply chains that are not only creative but fast to market?

The answers to these key questions form the core of Driving Strategic Innovation, a five-day program for business leaders and entrepreneurs who are determined to position their companies for future growth.

Program Benefits
Driving Strategic Innovation will change the way you, as a business leader, think about innovation and technology strategy, giving you a deeper, richer, more comprehensive roadmap for executing change. You will leave the program armed with the knowledge of how to influence corporate culture, alter the way your organization responds to the challenge of innovation, and strengthen relationships with partners along the value chain.

The program knits together marketing, product development, technology assessment, value-chain design, project execution, and talent management in an end-to-end roadmap for achieving breakthrough performance. It demonstrates how to build organizational relationships that facilitate knowledge transfer, both within the firm and across the value chain. Using a dynamic and integrative value-chain framework created at MIT, you will gain the capability to position your organization for future growth.

This intensive learning experience delivers long-term value, helping business leaders to:

• meet technology challenges, from R&D to manufacturing, project management to engineering
• link technology decisions with business strategy
• integrate product development, process developments and value-chain strategy
• develop organization and supply-chain strategies to position the company for future growth
• leverage learning and innovation collaboration with customers, lead users and suppliers, maximizing the value of research
• understand how technologies and markets evolve and how they are linked
• outperform the competition by generating breakthrough ideas
• cope with shorter product life cycles, while delivering greater customer satisfaction
• optimize sourcing and “make-buy” decisions
• integrate supply-chain design with concurrent engineering
• engage talent within the organization and across the value chain

The Learning Experience
Executives attending the program will participate in wide-ranging and challenging discussions, project groups, simulations, and live case studies that bring them into the very heart of some of the technology labs under discussion.

Who Should Attend
Driving Strategic Innovation is designed for senior executives and entrepreneurs who have significant input into the technology and innovation strategy of their organizations. Participants should play a key role within their organizations that gives them the ability and the perspective to look up and down the value chain to appraise strategic technology options wherever they arise.

Business leaders who will take away the greatest value from Driving Strategic Innovation:

• CTOs, R&D directors, other senior executives, and entrepreneurs who are responsible for technology, R&D, and supply-chain strategy, especially where coordinated technology development issues are essential
• CEOs, COOs, CIOs, and senior executives in charge of innovation or new business development
• Teams charged with planning and implementing innovation or value chain strategy

The MIT Sloan/IMD Edge
MIT Sloan is the world leader in management thinking for technology-driven innovation and operating excellence, with a legacy of helping corporations develop the tools and capabilities to successfully adopt these ideas.

IMD is recognized worldwide for its dynamic “Real World. Real Learning” approach to executive education. Working with the top companies in a diverse range of industries, IMD's experienced, highly qualified, and multinational faculty prepares managers and executives for the challenges of international business, providing breakthrough learning experiences.

Working together, MIT and IMD have an unparalleled ability to meet the needs of global corporations on both sides of the Atlantic.

Feedback from Participants

“This program provides the challenges, answers, professional tools and values needed to drive breakthrough innovations in technology and operations management, and it delivers on a world-class level.”
- Heinz Brasic
Managing Partner, Level Five Consulting
Austria

“Very exciting chance to think 'out of the box' and gain new perspectives.”
- Francesco Fanciulli
Senior Vice President, Pirelli Pneumatici SPA
Italy

“This was one of the best educational experiences I've ever had. The faculty created an exciting environment for understanding innovation.”
- Jose Francisco Mendez
Chief Information Officer, Sodexho Pass
Venezuela

Faculty Team*
Charles H. Fine, Program Co-Director
Chrysler LFM Professor of Management Science at MIT Sloan and co-director of MIT's Communications Technology Roadmap project, Fine teaches in the operations management group at MIT Sloan. Author of Clockspeed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage, Fine is widely respected for his research and writings on the technology supply chain. His research emphasis has been on quality improvement, flexible manufacturing, supply-chain management, and the evolution of industry value chains in technology-intensive sectors. Fine consults widely and has worked with companies in a wide range of industries.

William A. Fischer, Program Co-Director
Professor of Technology Management at IMD, Fischer has been actively involved in technology-related activities for his entire professional career. He was a development engineer in industry, an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and has worked as a consultant on R&D/technology issues in such industries as pharmaceuticals and telecommunications. He has served as a consultant to a number of government and international-aid agencies on issues relating to the management of science and technology, and has been the president of a joint-venture in China.

Jean-Phillippe Deschamps
Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at IMD and former Vice President and Chairman of Arthur D. Little's Technology and Innovation Management practice, Deschamps has 30 years of international management consulting experience. His research interests include innovation leadership, launching an innovation program in large mature companies, and the management of the innovation process, from idea to market launch.

Duncan Simester
Professor of Management Science, Simester is the head of the Marketing Group at MIT Sloan and is an expert on how economic theory, statistics, and operation research can contribute to the understanding and practice of marketing.

Eric von Hippel
Eric von Hippel is Professor, Management of Innovation, at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research examines the sources of and economics of innovation, with a particular focus on the significant role played by users in the innovation development process. Leading-edge companies are using his proven practical methods worldwide to develop major breakthroughs systematically.

* Please note that not all faculty teach in each program.