NMI5050 11901 - Generating Competitive Imagination - 0.5 credits (MUST ATTEND 3/30 AND 3/31 WORKSHOPS TO RECEIVE CREDIT)

Presenter:  Stuart Hart

Co-Presenter:  Dr. Sanjay Sharma

In today’s internet-connected and social media-driven world, it is no longer possible to “manage” the stakeholders associated with a business. Increasingly, stakeholders emerge from the periphery based upon their own interests and can overwhelm or “swarm” a company if proactive steps are not taken. Witness Shell, BP, Monsanto, or Pepsi in recent years. The trick is to engage and harness these emergent stakeholder voices to drive “competitive imagination” rather than framing divergent views as a source of conflict or distraction.

Indeed, unique and disruptive business ideas increasingly lie outside of an organization with “fringe” stakeholders. To discover the next great profitable innovation, companies must therefore extend the firm’s boundaries and tap into the knowledge and perspectives of those who may have little, or no prior connection to them. Listening to and learning from underserved or ignored populations not only brings powerful insight, but can yield transformative results. Dipping into the same well of stakeholders does little to spark corporate imagination or produce the highly prized disruptive innovation. But going to the edge (where few, including your competitors go) and harnessing “radical” perspectives from the outside, will not only build your innovative potential, but build better, more hopeful lives.

Engaging with populations who can help you unleash competitive imagination requires new skills. Accordingly, this LSP will seek to give participants basic competency in a set of tools that enable innovators to:

• Identify the core stakeholders for a company and understand the underlying issues that drive them
• Identify emergent “fringe stakeholders” and map their issues and concerns
• Develop new business opportunities based upon a deeper understanding of emerging and fringe stakeholder concerns and interests
• Propose new venture initiatives that generate mutual value for all stakeholders
• Build a commercial foundation for innovative new disruptive, clean technologies