Nathan Lord and Dr. Jeff Dyer, Department of Strategy
Innovation is a topic that keeps business leaders up at night. The current competitive landscape of corporate America has become a place in which companies must constantly renew their products, services, and identities. According to a survey by the Boston Consulting Group, an overwhelming majority of business leaders set innovation as a top priority. This same majority also admits its dissatisfaction with its innovation efforts thus far. Clearly these leaders are in need of better tools to identify and leverage sources of innovation both within and without their firms.
My research project was, in essence, an attempt to address these concerns and to provide leaders with a better understanding of what innovation is, where/who it comes from, and why it is (or is not) needed in their particular situation. While I did gain numerous insights into the innovative process, my research did not produce the panacea I first envisioned. Throughout my research, I encountered three main problems that complicated my particular project: definition of scope, data collection, and data analysis.
Scope
I was warned in my proposal that the broad scope of my research might present problems for me; I should have listened. I soon found that within my project were multiple projects that would best be dealt with independently. The help of my faculty mentor, Jeff Dyer, was invaluable in helping me to narrow my scope throughout the project. In our discussions we realized the need to focus on one principal research objective – identifying sources of innovation – instead of my original three objectives – defining, identifying, and leveraging sources of innovation. In addition, we further narrowed my scope to focus on founders of companies.
By continuing to narrow my scope throughout the project, my research not only became more practical for me to conduct but also more manageable for practitioners to apply; I moved from broad, general observations to specific, detailed instructions. In addition, such a scope seemed more appropriate given the context of my research – corporate America dedicates some of the brightest minds and biggest budgets to solving this problem. It seems a little naïve of me to think that within the short time frame and limited resources of my project I could bite off more than even corporate America collectively could chew.
Data Collection
Another problem I encountered during my research was data collection. This problem was really the sum of two other problems: (1) the inaccessibility of founders of companies, and (2) the nature of the data I was gathering.
Inaccessibility of Founders
It probably goes without saying that most founders of companies are very busy. In addition, most innovative companies are scattered around the globe. Reaching out to founders of nationally recognized companies was impractical, which forced my research to consider smaller, less sophisticated, local companies. My findings were therefore not as applicable to the larger companies that I initially attempted to address who struggle to maintain their entrepreneurial roots.
Qualitative Data
My research was looking for patterns that would explain what makes one founder entrepreneurial and innovative and another not. This data could come in many forms: life experiences, schooling, marital status, familial influence, geography, taste in music, etc. Though most high profile executives have published biographies, such accounts are not all encompassing and are passed through the filter of the author. Obtaining adequate records of all significant life events is impossible and presents a problem of data availability.
At this point one might argue that my data collection problem was really a matter of scope, that I had chosen to focus on the wrong group of people. However, I felt the scope was correct and that focusing on people – more specifically innovative founders – was actually the most manageable of my scope choices. Qualitative data collection was the nature of my project, not just the nature of my scope.
Data Analysis
Even if adequate data could have been gathered from a sufficient sampling of innovative founders, evaluating this data proved more complex than gathering it. How was I to know which experiences were most influential to a given founder? How was I to control for my own subjective ideas of what an entrepreneurial founder should be? How could I explain two apparently similar experiences with two completely different results? Because the data collection process was mostly qualitative, the data analysis process was of necessity qualitative as well. Such an analysis did not provide as rigorous and concrete of findings as I had hoped, which further lessened the effectiveness of my research.
Though my project suffered from these three problems, I still gained numerous insights into the innovative process as it relates to entrepreneurial founders. In addition, I feel my experience as a researcher was more valuable because of the difficulties, not in spite of them. Clearly, further work is needed in this area of research in order to help solve the problems I initially set out to address. I express my thanks and appreciation to both the donors and my faculty mentor, Jeff Dyer, for making this project a reality.