7Implementing Your Nanoinnovation Strategy
After decades of nanotech being just around the corner, we've finally reached the corner.
– Peter Balbus, Managing Director, Pragmaxis
At the beginning of this book, I pointed out that all of us are touched in some way by nanoinnovation. You may find yourself involved in a nanoinnovation project and you have to contribute ideas, or manage all or part of a nanoinnovation project. You may be involved in planning your organization's nanotechnology strategy. You may have an opportunity to champion a project and contribute ideas and support. As a manager, how do you operationalize nanoinnovation? What are the best practices and strategies? What questions do you need to ask? Is there a menu?
It's easy to say you need to be nanodextrous and deal with the various dichotomies – nano versus macro, research versus commercialization, incumbent versus emerging technologies and applications – but how do you actually do this? Where do you begin?
7.1 A Sense-Making Framework for Nanoinnovators
At the Wharton School where I spent much of my career managing Wharton's innovation research center (The Mack Institute for Innovation Management), I learned to think of problem solving in the context of “sense-making frameworks.”
The world's simplest (and most elegant) innovation framework I've seen was developed by Larry Huston, Procter & Gamble's longtime innovation guru. I first saw this in 1996 at a Wharton workshop I was helping to organize. Larry asked ...
Get NanoInnovation: What Every Manager Needs to Know now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.