More than 75 people, mostly senior decision makers from the Mack Center's industry partner group, and invited guests, attended the June 2 conference.  Left to right from top:  Prof. Andrew Metrick (Wharton) discusses calculating financial risk for growth projects; Pradip Banerjee (President/CEO of the University City Science Center) leads a panel discussing how to value ventures; bottom left: Gerald Mooney, IBM, discussed processes used to build and sustain growth at IBM, Prof. Metrick challenged the audience to participate in a valuation exercise; and Prof. George Day, co-organizer (with Prof. Paul Schoemaker) of the conference.

Innovation and Organic Growth:

Balancing Risk and Reward

 An Industry Partner Event Sponsored by the
Emerging Technologies Management Research Program of the
Mack Center for Technological Innovation

Organized by Profs. George Day and Paul J.H. Schoemaker

(Note: Profs. Day and Schoemaker are authors of the new book,
“Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals That Will Make or Break Your Company” published in May 2006 by Harvard Business Press)

 Friday, JUNE 2, 2006

Conference Description & Agenda
 

To innovate is to take risks.  The rewards are gained by seeing and seizing potential opportunities ahead of rivals, while protecting against undesirable outcomes.  This takes strategic, organizational and financial acumen and a willingness to embrace uncertainty.  The purpose of this conference was to examine the latest thinking on these challenges, including how best practice firms balance risk and reward in their portfolio of growth initiatives. 
This issue was examined from three interconnected perspectives:

            Strategic Perspectives
 

-         The challenge of estimating risks

-         Seeing better opportunities sooner: the value of peripheral vision

-         Finding uncontested market spaces

-         Methods for hedging and containing risks

-         How can firms improve their success rate
  without becoming unduly risk  averse?

 Organizational Perspectives

-         Achieving organizational alignment

-         The value of systematic and replicable processes

-         Flexible and customer-centric development processes

-         How do organizations learn from failures and experiments?

 Venture Capital Perspectives

-         How do financial markets see risk?  What does this mean for how VC’s manage and assess risk?

-         How to get upstream in the deal flow

-         Is it better to invest in people or projects?

AGENDA 

 8:30- 10:15   STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVES

                    “Overview of the Issues: Balancing Big I and little i Innovation”
                      George Day – Co-Director, Mack Center & Boisi Prof. of Marketing,
                      The Wharton School

                     “Strategic and Organizational Perspectives on Innovation”
                      Paul Schoemaker –  Research Director, Mack Center (Wharton) and
                      Chairman, Decision Strategies International

                      Donald Kalff, Former Executive Board member of KLM and author of
                      “An Unamerican Business: The Rise of the New European Enterprise”
                      (Kogan Page, 2005)

10:15-10:45    Break  

10:45-12:15    ORGANIZATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

                    “Systematic Processes for Sustainable Growth”
                      Gerry Mooney, Vice President, Corporate Strategy,
                      Emerging Business Opportunities, IBM           

                     “New Category Products and the
                      Contingent Action Approach to Risk”
                      Karl Ulrich, CIBC Professor of Operations and Information Management
                      (OPIM) and Chairperson, OPIM Dept, The Wharton School

12:15-1:00       LUNCH

 1:00- 2:30      VENTURE CAPITAL PERSPECTIVES

                    “Financial Markets Perspectives on Managing Risks”
                      Andrew Metrick, Assoc. Professor of Finance, The Wharton School

                     Panel Discussion:

                     Spencer Hoffman - Principal, Safeguard Scientifics
                     Michael DeRosa - Managing Director, DFJ Element Fund
                     Ashish Xavier - Principal, Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation

2:30 – 2:45     Break     

2:45 – 4:15     IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES - DISCUSSION

                      Chaired by Pradip Banerjee, President, University City Science Center

                      Jeffrey Kuhn – President, Growth Leaders
                      Brad Jones – Associate, W.L Gore & Associates
                      Sanjay Purohit - Assoc. VP and Head of Corp. Planning
                                              Infosys Technologies