Driving growth through innovation - Developing an innovation ecosystem

Dr. Ken Smith

Eller Distinguished Service Professor of Economics

University of Arizona

For almost three decades, we have optimized our organizations for efficiency and quality. We now look to innovation as the source of competitive advantage – for individuals, for organizations and for society. This presentation examines the four components of an innovation ecosystem and their implications for corporations, universities and public policy. To be successful, organizations must develop an innovation strategy that allows them to manage a portfolio of innovations, follow an explicit innovation process, build an organizational culture that rewards innovative behaviors and practices, and attract, train and promote employees with the skill sets to perform new roles and responsibilities.

Kenneth R. Smith, Ph.D.

Dr. Smith is Eller Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and APS Professor of Technology Management at the University of Arizona. He is the Director of the Advanced Technology Transfer Project, a partnership of The University of Arizona and the Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) of Mexico. The goals of the project are to build each institute’s capacity by preparing scientists to be skillful partners in the search for market opportunities, evaluating the market potential of research endeavors, and conducting commercial feasibility studies of the most promising technologies developed by the national institutes. He is currently studying how organizations can achieve growth by optimizing their innovation ecosystem. (See his article “Building an Innovation Ecosystem: Process, Culture and Competencies” in Industry & Higher Education Volume 20, No 4, August 2006).

He was the Dean of Eller College of Management from 1980 to 1995. Prior to becoming Dean of the Eller College, he served as Professor of Managerial Economics and Director of the Program in Hospital and Health Services Management at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. In 1984, Smith developed the Eller College of Management’s nationally recognized McGuire Entrepreneurship Program. He published extensively in the fields of microeconomic theory and health economics and organized the Business Foundations for Scientists Courses for the Professional Science Masters Program at the U of Arizona.