The essence of entrepreneurship is new combinations – combinations of ideas, resources, partners, customers – in the effort to create new market space. The entrepreneurial challenge is one of selecting among the many potential combinations that you see, and then finding a way to organizing the venture (whether startup, corporate, or non-profit) that will allow you to realize your ambition for the opportunity. In this course we will examine the challenges of entrepreneurial innovation. How should we approach the challenge of picking the right opportunity, aligning the right partners, and targeting the right market and, perhaps most importantly, setting the right expectations for a new venture. We will focus on the challenges and opportunities confronted by venture leaders. However, we will also consider the perspective of non-entrepreneur stakeholders (e.g., analysts, investors, partners, employees) who are not directly in charge of the new venture, but are directly impacted by its success, and must conduct their own due diligence before committing their allegiance and resources. We will develop a set of analytic lenses that will help us assess the potential of new opportunities and to strategize about how to best exploit them.
In this seminar we will continue to develop the theme of ecosystems introduced in the EIS course. We will explore whether and how strategy making needs to change when value creation requires multiple participants to interact.
Research to Practice Seminars are a new element of Tuck’s second-year program, meant to give students intensive exposure to a Tuck professor’s research-based knowledge. Research to Practice Seminars are based on three beliefs: (1) that the world is increasing in complexity, with knowledge and understanding becoming increasingly difficult to attain; (2) that the most successful managers will have the intellectual ability to sort through the world’s complexity; and (3) that both the results and methods of academic researchers are extremely useful in developing such intellectual ability.
The Tuck Executive Program (TEP) focuses senior executives on the critical skills and best practices for leading enterprises to greater organizational efficiency - and success. At TEP, you'll examine the components of successful business management and develop a personal approach to leadership in today's competitive business environment. With the facilitation of our acclaimed faculty, you'll also learn how to formulate and execute strategy, develop and use a leadership model, and effect and manage change. You'll consider organization-wide and business-unit strategy integration, effective resource allocation, and linking strategy to customers, competitors, and markets. Structured learning sessions, small group activities, case discussions, simulations, and presentations help you apply the latest in business thinking and practical business insights to a wide variety of business challenges. Main topic areas include financial analysis, marketing, operations, organizational behavior, and developing new approaches to leading and managing change and delivering results-oriented performance. The curriculum is integrated across three consecutive weekly modules.
Ron Adner, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, is the Faculty Director for the Leading Innovation Program, and an award-winning professor at the Tuck School. His research and teaching focus on innovation, strategy, and entrepreneurship. His work introduces a new perspective on the relationship among firms, customers, and the broader “innovation ecosystems” in which they interact to create value. He is a speaker and consultant to companies around the world and is actively engaged in executive education.