Case Study Critique

Mapping your
Innovation Strategy
By Scott D. Anthony, Matt Eyring, and Lib
Gibson

Done by: Hanan Sameer Salman

Summer Semester / 2020

Course: Experiential Entrepreneurship: Creativity,

Innovation & Opportunities.
Mapping your Innovation Strategy
Summary:
This case study focuses on how to plan you innovation strategy in a systematic way, it
also clarifies that innovation is not either only to take the old strategy that worked in
the past and try to execute them better, nor to search for markets that incubate
technology.

The authors recommend 4 steps to map the innovative strategy for an organization:

1. Pick your playing field.

- In this context authors recommended to decide where to play before deciding
how to play, and to choose where to play, companies should clarify what do they
won’t do?
- Authors also believe that strategies which based on disruptive innovation have
the highest chances of creating growth, this is clarify more by answering three
questions”
 What job can’t our existing customers get done?
 Who are the industry’s worst customers?
 Where are these barriers that constrain consumption?

2. Build your growth playbook.

- In this stage it’s the time to look at how to serve that market. One way to do so is
by developing a checklist that analyze ten to 15 major innovations in the market
segment’s history, and then figure out the elements shared by the truly
strategies.

3. Build your innovation game plan.

- In this stage it’s time to create short list of innovative ideas for your target
market and assess these ideas according to the success you have found and
to your checklist.
 - In this stage also the authors recommend to focus on pattern instead of
numbers.
4. Execute and adapt.
- In this stage authors clarify that plays often unfold in completely unpredicted
ways and they recommend to follow “invest a little, learn a lot”.

Change your role

Authors clarify that senior managers have an important role in creating environment for
innovation. And their role doesn’t stop at providing or facilitating the resources, they
should shield the innovation projects and support innovators to solve vexing projects.
This is mentioned in the case in two concepts:

Critique
It’s a good informative article supported by useful examples from famous and successful
companies, the language used is strong and clear, but it’s not easy to absorb the
meaning from the first round reading.

My opinion about the author’s process on how to map the innovation strategy is the
following:

- The points mentioned in the article are supported by examples, which bring the
ideas into real context.
- It’s a good idea from the authors to mention at the beginning of the case the
football game and how much it seems pretty simple on paper when planning to the
game then within the game many unpredictable scenarios came out. This could be
reflected directly in any innovation process techniques.

- I think the authors mentioned the role of senior managers in the right way but they
chose to place it at the end of the article, they should start the article by mentioning
this role first, to convince any type of readers by the importance of management
support for creating culture of innovation.
- Authors referred only to Harvard Business School Professor; Claton Christensen,
they didn’t support their argument with other researchers.

- Authors didn’t mention any failure stories to learn from or obstacles within
implementation. It also gave only a framework for mapping the innovation strategy
and success example. It will be more informative to give a practical example step by
step.

- Henry. El a, l mentioned in their article Organization for Innovation, that “to be

effective, your innovating strategy must also stipulate what kind of organizational
structure will best support implementation of your project” i, I think kind of
organization structure is a good point to be mentioned in the article Mapping your
Innovation Strategy.

- Nothing mentioned in the steps for mapping the innovation strategy about the
financial feasibility of the implementation, building the team, market risk analysis.

Ideas I liked:
 Invest a little, learn a lot.
 The right kind of failure is a success.

The authors mentioned that the right kind of failure is a success. The Mayo Clinic
gives a “queasy eagle” award to individuals who fail for the right reason, this will
give the reader the courage to think out of the box with no fear, even if his/her
company doesn’t support failure but at least it gives the reader the power to
search for a new working environment that support innovation. “Queasy eagle”
award to individuals who fail for the right reason.

 Step, don’t leap

 Innovation unfold in unpredictable way, but yet it’s not hit or miss

References
i
Henry W. Chesbrough and David J.Teece, Harvard Business Review Augest, 2002, Production no.1210