This proposal is to fund a first study as part of a longer-term initiative to better understand the threat of disruption from technological innovation. Disruption as a term has come to be used so frequently that it has lost specific meaning. In the larger project, I aim to bring precision to the term and focus on two specific questions. …Read More
In many innovation settings, ideas are generated over time and managers face a decision about if and how to provide in-process feedback to the idea generators about the quality of submissions. In this article, we use design contests allowing repeated entry to examine the effect of in-process feedback on idea generation.…Read More
This year, the Mack Institute teamed up with Darden’s Batten Institute to co-host the bi-annual Product Innovation and Technology Management Mini-Conference. The sixth iteration of this one-day event attracted more than 30 scholars to the Wharton School for lectures, discussions, and camaraderie.…Read More
Contests have a long history of driving innovation, and web-based information technology has opened up new possibilities for managing tournaments. One such possibility is the visibility of entries – some web-based platforms now allow participants to observe others’ submissions while the contest is live.…Read More
A groundbreaking study that assesses the potential impact of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on MBA programs.…Read More
How important is the original conception of an idea—the “raw” idea— to an innovation’s success? In this article, the authors explore whether raw ideas judged as “better” fare better in the market and also determine the strength of that relationship.…Read More
In a recent article for Quartz, author Jay Bhatti tackles the finicky issue of the MBA. Regarded as a step on the ladder toward corporate greatness, the MBA has long been considered a necessary degree for hopeful entrepreneurs. Lately, though, industry players have begun to question the true benefits of…Read More
Mack Center Core Team member Karl Ulrich features in a Financial Times article on “massive open online courses” (MOOCs). The Wharton School has so far offered six open courses via Coursera.org. “Even if we never earned a dime from Coursera, it’s great value to reach so many people,” comments Ulrich,…Read More
Mack Institute Senior Fellow and Wharton Vice Dean of Innovation, Karl Ulrich, taught the free course Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society this semester, via nonprofit education site Coursera.org.
The Wharton School’s Knowledge for Action Lifelong Learning world tour recently featured two Mack Center faculty, speaking on innovation culture and moving business beyond the status quo.
Wharton Magazine: With the establishment of Dean Robertson’s “three pillars”— innovation, global presence and social impact—why is innovation such an important component, and what is the role of the Innovation Group?
A common approach to innovation, parallel search, is to identify a large number of opportunities and then to select a subset for further development, with just a few coming to fruition. One potential weakness with parallel search is that it permits repetition. The same, or a similar, idea might be generated multiple times.…Read More
In a wide variety of settings, organizations generate a number of possible solutions to a problem—ideas—and then select a few for further development. We examine the effectiveness of two group structures for such tasks—the team structure, in which the group works together in time and space, and the hybrid structure, in which individuals first work independently and then work together.…Read More
