Innovation Dynamics

15 May 2003

DRAFT Proposal

WHAT

The Innovation Dynamics Initiative is a proposed technology & industry roadmapping framework for synthesizing knowledge about the innovation process by bridging across the varied technological research thrusts and richly connecting with industry. Each of the MIT priority areas of interest aspires to develop transformative technologies which invigorate industries and drive economic growth. And yet too rarely have technologies been developed – and successfully commercialized – amid deep, closed-loop awareness of the broader socio-economic context. We hope to involve companies and technology researchers across the entire value chain in several key industries in an effort to build roadmaps for that chain both informed by and feeding back into the technological research. Understanding which drivers of innovation dominate in key technology-business sectors – and educating & inspiring a new generation of industry-savvy technologists and technology-savvy managers – is our research and academic agenda.

WHY

Innovation is widely lauded and much desired, but still all too poorly understood. Too many seemingly glorious inventions gather digital dust in the Patent office archives. Massive R&D investments have too little return. There is a commercialization gap between the many inventions in academia and practical investments in industry. Business cycles and demand dynamics are still mystifying. Firms face strategic challenges in recognizing promising market opportunities and responding with vigor. Disruptions from below, emergent industries, exponential growth, standard-setting, platform crafting, and commoditization are representative strategic challenges.

This Initiative aspires to be the basis for rich and substantive engagement between academic technologists and industry strategists to tackle these issues. We propose this systematic roadmapping effort to integrate industry structure and technology dynamics with analytic rigor and thus define a new method going dramatically beyond the scope typically seen in market forecasts, simplistic trendline extrapolations, and high-level handwaving. This effort will be a formal, institutional mechanism to step back from specific MIT deep-research thrusts and – at an industry-level of analysis – understand the overarching drivers of success and real-world impact.

HOW & WHO

We draw general inspiration from the MIT Leaders for Manufacturing (LFM -- http://lfm.mit.edu/ ) program, among others. In the formation of this initiative, MIT brought together faculty from a disparate set of engineering departments and the Sloan School, and created a productive forum for collaboration, where the whole was greater than the sum of the parts both in research and education.

Specifically, this proposed Innovation Dynamics Initiative would draw lessons from and span dramatically beyond ongoing work in Microphotonics Technology Roadmapping (MTR -- http://mph-roadmap.mit.edu/ ) and the emerging efforts in understanding the value chain dynamics of Communications Futures (CFP -- http://cfp.mit.edu/ ). We already have preliminary efforts in Aerospace and Energy Systems and aspire through broaders connections to embrace more, through both research & curricular means:

• Research – We plan to link technologist faculty and researchers involved in and observing emerging technology research and business implications. MIT and partners, for example, are making bold investments in several broad emerging technology areas -- Information Technology, Biotechnology, Tiny Technologies, Complex Systems, Developmental Innovations (c.f. http://web.mit.edu/deshpandecenter/ & http://web.media.mit.edu/~jpbonsen/MIT-Emerging-Technology-Matrix.htm ) We hope to understand and complement this deep technology development.
• Education – We plan to build a coherent curriculum by expanding upon the existing technology management curriculum. To this base, we will add courses deep in technology, as well as make more coherent the large set of offerings at Sloan, including at prototype seminars in Technology Roadmapping (Fine) -- http://web.media.mit.edu/~jpbonsen/TRM-Fall2002-poster.jpg -- and Disruptive Technologies (Utterback) and building on extremely strong course offerings in Technology Strategy (Henderson), Business/System Dynamics (Sterman, Repenning, Hines), and others.

FUTURE ASPIRATIONS

In due time, we hope to broaden and build on this Innovation Dynamics initiative to create an Innovation Observatory Network (ION), a concerted multi-University, multi-nation, long-term effort observe innovation in all its richness, crossing multiple emerging technology-industry domains, and encompassing multiple levels of analysis, for example:

Inventive Individuals à Effective Teams à Startup Companies à Emerging Industries à Regional Clusters à Growth Economies

The Innovation Dynamics Initiative, and ION more generally, are institution-building vehicles by which deep research & education about innovation can become intimately interwoven. We aspire to educate and inspire a new generation of industry-savvy technologists and technology-savvy managers through Masters and Doctoral programs. Furthermore, by focusing on the verge between academia & industry, we have a strategic mechanism for deep & rich industry participation. These are the beginnings of a bold, multi-university, globally-oriented effort to understand our innovation ecosystem.