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Conference Summary

Wharton

William & Phyllis Mack Center for Technological Innovation

 

Arrow Showing Growth and MetricsMEASURING

AND MANAGING

INNOVATION

A Wharton Impact Conference

presented by the Mack Center for

Technological Innovation

 

Friday, Nov. 7, 2008

Organized by Professors George Day and David Reibstein.

 

More than 80 senior managers from industry and government attended this event, which featured presentations by academic experts and senior managers from best practice companies who offered insights on measuring and managing innovation for organizations involved in developing and deploying technological innovations. 

 

George Day, Co-Director of the Mack Center at the Wharton School Wharton Professor David Reibstein co-organized the "Innovation Metrics" conference at Wharton on Nov. 7, 2008 Wharton Professor Karl Ulrich, chair of the Operations and Information Management Department at Wharton Prof. Gerard Tellis, University of Southern California

Left to right: Wharton Professors George Day, David Reibstein, Karl Ulrich; Gerard Tellis (University of Southern California)

 

Profs. George Day and David Reibstein presented an advance look at results from a major survey on innovation management and metrics sponsored by the Mack Center in collaboration with McKinsey & Company - including preliminary results received the week of the conference. 

Prof. Gerard Tellis from the University of Southern California reported on the results of an intriguing study that looks at the relationship between innovation reporting and timing, and market capitalization. 

Prof. Karl Ulrich discussed a study involving innovation metrics in the pharmaceutical industry, and best practices from his extensive research in the field of innovation. 

  Dr. Martin Fleming, VP, Global Market Research at IBM 

Dr. Hans-Willi Schroiff, (left above) Corporate VP, Global Market Research at Henkel AG, discussed a comparative study involving metrics for measuring new consumer products using a customized data warehouse system called Minerva, in four European markets (Italy, Germany, Spain and France). 

Dr. Martin Fleming, IBM, at the Wharton Impact Conference, Nov. 7, 2008.Dr. Martin Fleming, (center above and left) VP Corporate Strategies at IBM, discussed IBM's "three horizon" framework for planning, valuing and developing innovations.

Brian J. Kelley (right above) from the management team at Covance (formerly with Merck), joined Karl Ulrich in discussing best practices for pharmaceutical firms, including metrics for drug development.

 

 

Panelists at the Wharton Impact Conference on Managing and Measuring Innovation, November 7, 2008.  Terry Fadem, Managing Director of the Office of Corporate Alliances at the School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, uses a flipchart to describe a concept raised during the discussion.

 

Warren Haug (Northwestern University, retired VP Research and Development at Procter and Gamble and Senior Fellow in the Mack Center at Wharton),  chaired a lively panel discussion on leveraging innovation best practices and metrics.  Panelists included: John Ranieri, VP and General Manager, DuPont Applied Biosciences; Patia McGrath, Global Director, Innovation and Strategic Connections at General Electric; and Terry Fadem, Managing Director, Corporate Alliances at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

 

Themes:

A basic tenet of management is that, "what matters gets measured."  Because driving organic growth through innovation is near the top of most corporate agendas, there is intense interest in innovation metrics. In this Wharton Impact Conference*, the Mack Center for Technological Innovation brought together a distinguished group of academics and practitioners to assess current best practices and identify next practices for managing innovation systems by improving the allocation of innovation resources to support a growth strategy, the efficiency and productivity of these resources, the accountability for results, and the motivation of desired organizational behavior.

 

Where managers once demanded quality, cost and marketing metrics, they also want rigorous and credible measures of their innovation activities.  They seek to answer questions regarding the health of their portfolio of opportunities and whether they will deliver the investment returns the company expects; they want to measure the strongest and weakest links in the company’s overall innovation process, they seek to understand how they can improve the overall success rate, shorten time-to-pay-back and enhance their ability to learn; and whether the right incentives are in place.   Finding answers to these questions is admittedly difficult because innovations are the outcome of a diffuse, creative and risky process with a long time lag between spending and payoff.

 

CONFERENCE SPOTLIGHT

 

Dr. Warren Haug, Northwestern University and retired VP-R&D at Procter and Gamble, moderated a distinguished panel that included Terry Fadem (Managing Director, Corp. Alliances, Penn Medical School), Patia McGrath (Global Director, Innovation and Strategic Connections, General Electric), and John Ranieri (Vice President and General Manager, DuPont Applied Biosciences).

 *Wharton Impact Conferences are co-sponsored with the Office of the Dean and are designed to address topics of interest and concern to decision makers in business, government and academia.