NC State College Launches Managing Disruptive Innovation Executive Workshop

North Carolina State University College of Management

– Executive Programs in the North Carolina State University College of Management is presenting the executive workshop, “Managing Disruptive Innovation,” in January and February 2011, in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

The workshop, part of the NC State Executive Program’s Innovation Management Executive Series, is designed for business leaders who are accountable for driving innovation discovery, development and deployment for their organization.

“Competing today requires a new way of doing business a new way of thinking,” said Dr. Richard Kouri, professor of practice and executive director of the BioSciences Management Initiative in the NC State College of Management and one of the instructors in the Managing Disruptive Innovation workshop.  

“When you have the insight to manage through emerging market trends, you can quickly adapt your business model, creating an environment where innovation permeates every part of your organization,” he said. “The result is that you can respond quickly to new market opportunities and optimize current operations to create new sources of revenue.”

The Managing Disruptive Innovation workshop, built on research conducted through the college’s Center for Innovation Management Studies (CIMS) and applied industry research, provides executives knowledge and tools to help them gain the insight needed to more effectively lead their organizations.

A pilot offering of this executive workshop received positive feedback when it was offered in April 2010 to participants primarily from the biosciences industry. The 2011 series is open to companies and organizations from diverse industries seeking to improve their processes for managing disruptive innovation.

“This program has helped us to form a more effective strategy for development of a new business,” said one of the participants, Dr. John Didsbury, president and chief executive officer of the Drug Discovery Center of Innovation (COI), one of several COIs launched by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Another participant, Genichi Kakefuda, senior research project manager at BASF Plant Science, LLC, said the workshop “delivers a unique perspective on managing companies in a disruptive environment. Turned on its head is the conventional dogma that technology drives disruptive innovation. Instead, the team convincingly advocates business model innovation as the disruptive force in the marketplace. Organizations will differentiate and lead when dynamic market trends are deciphered through intelligent analytics, and unique business models are molded to embrace change as opportunities.”

He added, “The workshop is timely for organizations impacted by current megatrends in open innovation, the democratization and explosion of information, social networks, new technologies, globalizing economies and an increasingly disrupted marketplace.”

The Managing Disruptive Innovation workshop is comprised of three modules, each delivered over the course of two days. Module one, innovation discovery, addresses responding to market signals and converting market signals to change imperatives. Module two covers innovation development: componentizing your business model and seeking partners. Module three covers innovation deployment: assessing your organizational culture and creating your change plan.