Events

Innovation Ecosystems for Leaders: Delivering Sustainable Competitive Advantage

A new workshop drawing on MIT research to provide an introduction to innovation ecosystems.

Hosted by: MIT Sloan Executive Education

Innovation is a driver of productivity, comparative advantage, economic growth, and enterprise value. But innovation does not happen in a vacuum. It requires a network of participants — entrepreneurs, corporate managers, investors, researchers, university faculty, venture capitalists, government officials, suppliers, and customers — who comprise the ecosystem. Innovating in such ecosystems creates a new set of challenges for organizations and their leaders. Executives often find it hard to get beyond the buzzwords to harness the power of this phenomenon for their organizations.

The new Innovation Ecosystems for Leaders: Delivering Sustainable Competitive Advantage course demystifies this important concept, alongside the broader topics of innovation and entrepreneurship, and explains how the right ecosystem can provide both an inspiration for innovation and source of competitive advantage. Participants will learn to understand their role as stakeholders in innovation ecosystems. They will learn ways to assess both their local and other ecosystems (including Boston and elsewhere) as potential locations for innovation centers, etc. And also to partner with startup entrepreneurs, research universities, ‘risk capital’ providers and other corporate/government stakeholders, on accelerators, prizes, and hackathons.

Participants in the program need not aim to become corporate entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs themselves, but they should want to understand — as leaders and managers — how to access external innovation from the ecosystem, and how to lead on internal innovation.

Faculty:

  • Phil Budden, MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer and former British Consul General to New England
  • Fiona Murray, Associate Dean for Innovation & Co-Director MIT Innovation Initiative; William Porter Professor of Entrepreneurship; Faculty Director Legatum Center; Member of the UK Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology (CST)

Details

March 30–31, 2017 | June 27–28, 2017 | November 7–8, 2017
Cambridge, MA
$3,700 (excluding accommodations)

Learn more and register at the MIT Sloan Executive Education website