Competing on Innovation: Implications for Career Clusters

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Competing on InnovationImplications for Career
Clusters

• by
• Robert G. Sheets
• Business and Industry Services
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• June 2007

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Presentation Overview

• American businesses will increasingly compete on
  innovation in the global economy--the key factor
  will be innovation talent
• States and regions will compete on how well they
  provide the best stream of innovation talent
• CTE should play a central role in producing
  innovation talent through career cluster
  frameworks that have expanded foundations and
  pathways focused on core business processes
• Core business processes provide the best context
  for high-level interdisciplinary academic
  integration and problem based teaching strategies
• Building innovation talent will require
  disruptive innovation in the education enterprise

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Businesses Competing on Innovation

• Defining business innovation..
• The development and implementation of new ideas
  and new ways of doing things (business models,
  products and services, markets, processes) to
  create customer value and drive business growth.
  It includes both incremental improvements and
  breakthrough developments. It is the interface
  between business entrepreneurship and science and
  technology discovery as well as other types of
  creativity and discovery beyond the physical
  sciences and engineering, including art and
  design and the social sciences. It requires the
  effective management of the natural tension
  between promoting creativity and discovery and
  capturing economic value for businesses and their
  partners.
• Source Illinois Innovate Now Initiative

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Businesses Competing on Innovation

• Businesses will compete on doing it faster,
  cheaper, and better
• Not just scientific discovery and technological
  breakthroughs
• Entrepreneurship and innovation
• Balancing sustaining and disruptive innovation
• Customer-centered and open and collaborative
  organizations within value network
• Rewiring the organization to build the capacity
  for continuous innovation (Figure 1)

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Figure 1 Transition to 21st Century Workplaces

From To  Management

Centralized Decentralized
Functions
Separated Shared  
Professional/Technical
Centralized Decentralized Knowledge

Specialized Integrated

Some Workers All Workers   Work
Design
Jobs Functional/


Cross-functional Teams   Organizational Structure
Vertical
Customer-Supplier
Hierarchies
Networks   Employee
Job Task
Work Unit Performance Responsibility
Performance
Business Process Management   Career Progression
Vertical
Vertical and Horizontal

Limited Range Full Range Source
Adapted from Schray and Sheets (2002)
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Workers Competing on InnovationThe Future of
Routine Work

• Businesses constantly fight commoditization and
  price competition
• Workers must constantly drive and support
  innovation or face the future of routine work
• Automation---growing capabilities of technology
  to perform routine work
• Outsourcingsourcing globally on price
• Devaluationwage competition among growing global
  workforce with rising general skill levels

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Innovation-based Economic Development

• Three Generations of State Policies
• Industrial attraction and retentionfront-line
  production workers
• Entrepreneurship and science/technology-based
  economic development---new/early stage business
  formation and technology commercializationbusines
  s entrepreneurs and STEM workers
• Innovation-based economic developmentimproving
  state and regional innovation performanceinnovati
  on talent
• Targeting opportunitiestechnologies and economic
  clusters
• Most critical---innovation talent pool

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Innovation Talent Pool

• Customer Focusunderstanding needs and what
  customer is trying to get done
• Business Entrepreneurshipthinking like a
  business in fast-paced, changing environment
• Specialized and Multidisciplinary and
  Cross-Functional Skillsinnovation occurs at the
  intersection of different fields and functions
• Collaboration Skillsworking with customers and
  internal and external team members
• Global and Cross-Cultural Orientation---open to
  different cultures and diverse perspectives
• Information Technology Skillsnew platform for
  for work and learning

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Building the Innovation Talent PoolBalancing
Depth and Breadth

• Depth Expert Role Performers
• Beyond routine job performance
• Strengthening academic/technical knowledge and
  skills
• Breadth Career Entrepreneurs
• Business entrepreneurship
• Business process management
• Career and learning management

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Building the Innovation Talent PoolMaintaining
the Line of Sight

• Business Entrepreneurunderstanding the business
  model and how core business processes add value
  to the business and maintain sustainable
  competitive advantages
• Business Process Managerunderstanding how to
  manage and improve the performance of the most
  critical business processes
• Team Leader---understanding how the work team can
  best contribute to the performance and constant
  improvement of the most critical business
  processes
• Expert Role Performer---understanding how you can
  best add value to the work team in ways that add
  value to the core business processes and the
  business as a whole

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Solution Career Clusters

• Depth Career Specialties
• Connecting to degrees/certificates and industry
  certifications with market value
• Breadth Foundations and Pathways
• Foundationscareer management, business systems,
  new workplace basics, academic and technical
  knowledge and skills
• Pathwaysmanaging and improving business
  processes and more focused and integrated skill
  applications

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Focusing Career Pathways on Critical Business
Processes

• Critical to innovation capacity in businesses
• Managing and improving critical end-to-end
  business processes and functions
• Product realization
• IT system life cycle
• Logistics planning
• Merchandise planning
• Must move to higher-level and broader
  applications (Figure 2)

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Figure 2 Addressing Complete Business Functions
and End-to-End Processes
  Occupational Roles
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Why Focus on Innovation and Business Processes?

• Linkage to Economic DevelopmentBuilding the
  Innovation Talent Pool
• Innovation skills best addressed in context of
  business processes
• Business process management and improvement are
  critical to innovation capacity
• Provides the basis for business-education
  partnerships at the postsecondary and secondary
  levels.
• Linkage to Education Reform
• Provides the basis for higher-level academic
  integration while focusing on authentic work.
• K-12 career developmentprovides the missing link
  of career exploration

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Key Foundation Components
Entrepreneurship
Innovation
Innovation Methods/ Tools
STEM Foundations and Leading Technologies
New Workplace Skills
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Key Foundation Components

• Entrepreneurshiptaking risks and creating and
  capturing value
• Understanding central role of business models in
  creating and capturing value
• Managing business processesAdding value to core
  business processes
• STEM Foundations and Leading Technology
• Strong interdisciplinary foundations and related
  fields (e.g., design, social sciences)
• Working knowledge of critical technologies within
  career cluster/pathway

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Key Foundation Components

• Innovation Methods and ToolsDiscipline of
  Innovation
• Innovation is not just creativity
• Tension between generating new ideas and creating
  and capturing value better, cheaper and faster
  than others
• Learning the general methods and tools of
  innovation (e.g., Lean Six Sigma)
• New Workplace SkillsGlobal Collaboration
• New workplace basics (e.g., critical thinking)
• Global and cross-cultural orientation
• Customer and cross-functional team member
  collaboration
• New mass collaboration platform skills

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How To Get Started

• Establish state/regional industry consortia with
  economic and workforce development partners in
  key career clusters (e.g., manufacturing,
  healthcare, transportation, distribution and
  logistics)
• Develop and validate core business processes with
  industry partners for each pathway in the
  selected career clusters
• Determine academic, workplace, and technical
  foundations including innovation skills and
  business process management toolsnew foundations
• Align/develop specialty programs off the business
  process platform
• Develop problem-based learning templates and
  examples that address innovation skills and
  business processes.
• Develop templates and examples at multiple
  levelscareer exploration, career preparation and
  advanced preparation.

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Example Core Business Processes for Career
Pathways

• Manufacturing
• Product realization
• Process improvement
• Transportation, Distribution, and Logistics
• Logistics planning
• Information Technology
• IT system development and management (life cycle)
• Finance
• Financial planning
• Marketing, Sales and Service
• Merchandise planning and management

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Innovating EducationFuture Challenges

• Where we are at now--sustaining innovations in
• Content--What we teach (e.g., leading
  technologies)
• Methods--How we teach (e.g., problem-based
  learning)
• OrganizationHow we organize education (e.g.,
  cluster-based programs of study)
• Where we need to bedisruptive educational
  innovations to produce innovation talent better,
  cheaper and faster than anywhere else in the
  world