Fourth TechBiz Seminar "Two faces of Innovation: a promise during crisis, and a journey with ups and downs!" Prof. Marius Meeus, Tuesday 10 November 2009 (Free access)

Companies are confronted with a severe crisis in almost each sector. Demand has fallen dramatically and caused a cascade of social and economic effects. What does innovation contribute to company performance? How and in what ways does innovation help coping with these crises? Is it only product innovation that counts, or do we need process innovation, or a mixture of both? A review of relevant research will be presented to show how an innovation portfolio and its organisational conditions will make firms survive.
Now in a world full with time pressures and short term performance preferences innovation competes with strategic alternatives for survival such as M&A's, outsourcing, and restructuring of organisations with new business models. In this context innovation is just one of the growth options, and not an uncontested one in board rooms. The second part of the lecture will try to unravel these aspects of the politics of innovation.
Innovation comes with ups and downs. In the end the results count, and memory is short, if results are positive the downers will soon be forgotten. Nevertheless companies need innovation intelligence, not only technologically, but also behavioural strategies that make people belief they can and should go for innovation.
This presentation will take the bumpy road to the land of hope and glory, which innovation stands for, as its second topic area. The main question is: how do managers and their teams keep the innovation efforts going, despite the drawbacks and failures throughout the journey?
Two frameworks will guide the lecture: trial-and-error learning, and learning from performance feedback. They both answer the questions raised, but differently On the basis of specific cases taken from several research projects the models will be substantiated answering questions such as: what do we learn from errors, how to use errors in designing and planning innovation, which performance feedbacks make innovation projects more successful, which performance feedbacks.

Prof. Marius Meeus, Centre for Innovation Research Tilburg University. Marius T.H. Meeus (1957) is Professor of Strategy, Innovation and Organisation Learning at Tilburg University, Department of Organisation as of December 2006.

The fourth seminar will be held at The Strip, High Tech Campus Eindhoven, 16:00 - 18:00 hrs. We kindly invite you to join the lecture of Prof. Marius Meeus.
If you would like to participate please send an e-mail to [email protected]. Participation is free of charge. If you would like to invite a colleague, associate or friend, feel free to register him/her as well.
We look forward to meeting you on Tuesday 10 November 2009.