Understanding and managing innovation processes

Abstract

The lecture was delivered at the Prize ceremony during the 19th International Conference of the System Dynamics Society in Atlanta, Georgia. It summarizes the Award winning article, published in the 1996 issue of System Dynamics Review, and discusses subsequent work. Comprehensive citations and quotations are found in the original publications. Shortened product life cycles, tight competition, and resource intensive research and development are some of the parameters that make innovation management a highly challenging endeavor. To succeed in such an environment, a solid understanding of the observed and the expected behavior is indispensable and can effectively be supported by modeling the object under investigation. The article analyzes strategies for new products, especially price strategies, and includes the processes of research and development in a comprehensive model, which then is disaggregated to explicitly take into consideration the actions of different competitors. Finally, a multi-person gaming version is presented. The article concludes with some thoughts about complexity, its dimensions and its challenges for system dynamics.

Linking event thinking with structural thinking: methods to improve client value in projects

“…This research may inform these discussions in the literature because we propose and test formal methods for linking qualitative system maps and quantitative simulation models. Finally, Warren (2002), Morecroft (1984Morecroft ( , 1985, Morecroft and Sterman (1994) and Milling (2002), among others, have demonstrated that formal system dynamics models can be powerful supports for strategic planning. From a different analytic tradition, scenario analysis ( Van der Heijden, 1996;Wack, 1985) is one of the crucial tools for strategic planning often revealing counter-intuitive effects and dynamic behavior.…”

Who is to blame, the operator or the designer? Two stages of human failure in the Chernobyl accident

“…He terms systems as tightly (antonym: "loosely") coupled, if an accident is spreading quickly throughout the system. Note that the dimensions "complex-linear" and "tightly-loosely coupled" are sometimes addressed by the term "complexity", which has the dimensions of variety, connectivity, and functionality (Milling, 1981(Milling, , 2002. In a system with a high number of elements which are closely connected and where the functionalities of those connections are nonlinear, minor failures can end in severe accidents because such systems are nontrivial and hence unpredictable (Perrow, 1984).…”

Why Does a Company Fail to Manage a Corporate Scandal?

“…This trend implies a limitation in the econometric case study approach. Other researchers have attempted to model a company's promotional activities [11][12][13][14][15]. The present study aims to illuminate the management of a corporate scandal based on the company's protective activities.…”