MGMT 6520D: Innovative Company & High Performance Case Study

This case study analyzes the strategies for building innovative companies and achieving high-performance management, using Qualcomm and IBM as examples. The case study explores Qualcomm's innovative idea competition and IBM's Emerging Business Opportunity program. Key topics include: employee innovation, leadership in innovation projects, funding and incubation of innovation projects, tracking and monitoring progress, and graduation criteria for innovation projects. The study examines the roles of business units, corporate R&D, and the implementation of these programs within a larger organizational structure. The case also discusses how IBM uses a color-coded system to evaluate the progress of the innovation programs. This assignment is designed to provide insights into the practical aspects of fostering innovation within an organization.

BUILDING INNOVATIVE COMPANY TO ACHIEVE HIGH
PERFORMANCE
MGMT 6520D (L1)
Roger Chen
Class 2
(June 29th, 2017)
(Learning Summary/Requirements)
1. We first discussed the Qualcomm’s case where the company run an
innovative idea competition program to help the company innovate.
The case on different lessons pertaining to building innovative
company, including employees’ continuous roles in innovation projects
they initiated, the managers’ (at Business unit) support to employees
who initiated innovation projects, the organizational homes to incubate
innovation projects, the acceptance of business units to innovation
projects initiated outside of the BUs and the relationship between
corporate R&D center and corporate innovation program (or gaining
support from corporate R&D), etc. For companies that want to organize
similar innovative idea competition, this case provides many good
lessons on the design and running of such competition programs.
2. After the Qualcomm case, our class mainly focused on IBM’s
innovation case, its Emerging Business Opportunity program.
For this case, our first learning deals with “where to start” issue: for a
company that wants to transform itself and to build company-wide
innovation DNA, starting with appointing a strong leader
(organizational owner) and forming a (small) leadership team is crucial
to help the company start the innovation transformation journey.
For IBM’s innovation program, we mainly discussed following lessons.
(a). How to find and motivate leaders to lead various innovation
projects. We discussed IBM’s learning and their practices pertaining
these leadership issues. It is important to understand what IBM did, and
the reasons.
(b). Funding to the innovation project. In order to get funding, what
information/documents/preparation does IBM require innovation

projects to submit, how much money the company invest to innovation
project, and more importantly, who pays for most of the innovation
projects, and reasons for IBM follow these practices.
(c). The process of incubating these innovation projects. This includes
the market search and adjusting by these innovation projects, the
monthly meetings to review the progress of the projects, etc.
(d). Tracking and monitoring the progress of the innovation projects,
this includes the criteria they used to assess the progress of innovation
projects, which are frequently non-financial in early stages. The case
also discussed how did the company used a color-coded system to
evaluate the progress (on track, behind schedule, etc.) of the innovation
programs, etc.
(e). Graduating innovation projects from innovation program. We
discussed the reasons for such graduation, and criteria that IBM used to
determine if an innovation project is ready for graduation etc.