Wednesday, May 8, 2013The Wharton School:
Workshop on Innovation Tournaments
Workshop Outline
Innovation Tournaments is developed and led by Professor Karl Ulrich, Vice Dean of Innovation at the Wharton School.————————————————————————————————————
Program Details
When: 9 am to 1 pm, May 8
Where: Abu Dhabi Men's College
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Innovation is the lifeblood of value creation in both the for-profit and social sectors. Disruptions arising from globalization, information technology, and demographic shifts have created unprecedented opportunities and challenges for organizations to innovate.
Innovation is critical both for the development of new products and services, targeted at external customers and stakeholders, as well as for improvement in internal business processes and practices. The workshop focuses on Innovation Tournaments, an organizational approach to creating, identifying, and developing exceptional opportunities for innovation.
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Workshop Benefits
This intensive workshop will draw on material from Wharton's diverse programs on managing innovation. It will include team exercises; case discussions; and hands-on problem solving. Participants will learn how to apply the principles of innovation tournaments to their own innovation challenges.
Participants will gain a fresh approach to innovation by:
- Responding to an innovation challenge posed to the participants.
- Applying new concepts and frameworks to respond to that challenge.
- Learning the four fundamental ways to improve performance of innovation tournaments.
- Discussing the barriers to implementing these approaches in their own organizations.
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Who Should Attend?
This program is designed for experienced executives who want to evolve and hone their ability to lead innovation. Senior academics, managers from the private, public, and nonprofit sectors are welcome.
Through a combination of presentations, exercises, cases, and discussions, seminar participants will learn to:
- Generate and identify new opportunities for innovation.
- Organize a group of individual into a cohesive force for innovation.
- Evaluate and select the best opportunities for further development.
- Manage the innovation pipeline in an organization.
- Create the supporting organizational structure for innovation in larger organizations.
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About the Instructor
Karl T. Ulrich is Vice Dean of Innovation and the CIBC Professor of Entrepreneurship and e-Commerce at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds an appointment as Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
His research is focused on innovation, entrepreneurship, and product development. He is the co-author of Product Design and Development (5th Edition, McGraw-Hill, 2011), a textbook used by a quarter of a million students worldwide, and of Innovation Tournaments (Harvard Business Press, 2009).
He is the winner of many teaching awards, including the Anvil Award, the Miller-Sherrerd Award, and the Excellence in Teaching Award at The Wharton School. At Penn, he co-founded the Weiss Tech House and the Integrated Product Design Program, two institutions fostering innovation in the university community.
In addition to his academic work, Professor Ulrich has led dozens of innovation efforts for medical devices, tools, computer peripherals, food products, web-based services, and sporting goods. As a result of this work, he holds more than 20 patents. Professor Ulrich is a founder of Terrapass Inc. which the New York Times identified as one of the most noteworthy ideas of 2005, and he is a designer of the Xootr scooter, which Business Week recognized as one of the 50 coolest products of the 21st Century.
Professor Ulrich holds bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT.
