Thinking like an innovator: managerial decision-making makes a major difference in innovation success

Report presents new "Framework for Effective Innovation Management"

OTTAWA, May 23, 2014 /CNW Telbec/ - Few Canadian firms are highly successful innovators, but those that are have managers who take steps to improve market awareness, accumulate and draw on experience, and reduce bias and error in judgment, according to a new Conference Board of Canada report.

Detailed findings of the report will be presented at Business Innovation Summit 2014: Accelerating Corporate Innovation and Commercialization, on Wednesday, May 28 at 2:30 p.m. in Toronto.

The Centre for Business Innovation report, Improving Innovation Management Decision-Making: Thinking Like an Innovator, finds that making better innovation-related decisions depends on a foundation of:

• Awareness—collecting more and better information about markets (market awareness) and firm capabilities (self-awareness);
• Experience— drawing on a firm's own, or others', experience; and
• Judgment—taking steps to recognize and reduce bias and error in judgment.

"The most successful innovation managers take steps to ensure that their decision-making related to innovation is informed, structured and insulated from bias and misperception as much as possible. Unfortunately, not enough businesses take the rigorous approach needed to improve innovation decision-making," said Daniel Munro, Principal Research Associate.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Effective management is critical to innovation success.
• Innovative firms have managers who think, question and behave in ways that can improve the quality of decision-making in the face of risk and uncertainty.
• Formal business education contributes to managerial effectiveness, but awareness, experience and sound judgment are more important.  

The report presents a "Framework for Effective Innovation Management —Questions to Improve Decision-Making" that captures the ways of thinking, questioning and behaving exhibited by effective managers to help other firms improve innovation decision-making. The Framework identifies 25 key questions that managers should ask themselves and others to improve awareness, draw on experience, and recognize and correct biases and errors in judgment—thereby putting them in a position to make better innovation-related decisions.

Formal business education can help managers ask the right questions and improve their innovation decision-making. However, many of the innovation managers and decision-makers the Conference Board spoke to during this research —including those with MBAs and other business degrees—regarded experience as making a greater contribution to their innovation decision-making abilities.

The report recommends that firms and managers pursue four strategies:

• Use the "Framework for Effective Innovation Management", presented in this report, to achieve a more informed, systematic, and structured approach to decision-making.
• Accumulate experience and draw on its lessons when considering options and making innovation-related decisions.   
• Develop and draw on external networks of experience—including investors, experts, and other innovators.
• Pursue formal management education, but only after accumulating at least a few years of actual managerial experience.

The Centre for Business Innovation will highlight this and other research at Business Innovation Summit 2014: Accelerating Corporate Innovation and Commercialization. This second annual Summit takes place Wednesday, May 28 and Thursday, May 29 in at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Learn more about Business Innovation Summit 2014.

Launched in 2012, the Centre for Business Innovation is a five-year initiative designed to help bring about major improvements in firm-level business innovation in Canada.

Image with caption: "Framework for Effective Innovation Management --Questions to Improve Decision-Making (CNW Group/Conference Board of Canada)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20140523_C3950_PHOTO_EN_2238.jpg

Video with caption: "Bruce Good, Executive Director, Centre for Business Innovation, describes Business Innovation Summit 2014". Video available at: http://stream1.newswire.ca/cgi-bin/playback.cgi?file=20140523_C3950_VIDEO_EN_2239.mp4&poster=http%3A%2F%2Fphotos.newswire.ca%2Fimages%2F20140523_C3950_VIDEO_EN_2239.jpg&order=2&jdd=20140523&cnum=C3950

SOURCE: Conference Board of Canada

Yvonne Squires, Media Relations, Tel.: [phone] ext. 221, E-mail: [email protected]