Vision
and Practice in Leadership
The
Center for Innovation in Product Development
By
Michael Mack, Communications
Coordinator
Leadership
– like beauty – may be immediately recognizable (“I
know it when I see it”), but naming its most essential qualities
may require some reflection. A Google search (essential nowadays to
any serious reflection) reveals hundreds of pages listing various qualities
important in a leader – endurance, enthusiasm, knowledge, and
courage, to name only a few. But whether a leader is an individual or
a group, an entrepreneur or an established organization with a venerable
history, two qualities are essential.
The
first is vision. A leader must be able to imagine things as different
(and better) than they are now. Since our inception in 1996, we at the
Center for Innovation in Product Development (CIPD) have imagined a
future for product development that is increasingly dispersed, global,
and driven by new information and communication technologies. A joint
effort between the Sloan School of Management and the School of Engineering,
our Center seeks to increase the synergy between research in management
and engineering.
At
the heart of our work is a vision of sustainable process improvement.
Our goal is to find new methods that will significantly improve the
process of technological change, while managing increasing social and
human complexity. In the face of ever-increasing complexity, our goal
remains simple – to resolve the problems of complex product development
with research fueled by vision.
But
vision without practical application can be as ephemeral as a dream
(yes, you discovered that you could fly, but also discovered that you
were wearing only your underpants). A second quality essential in a
leader is the means for implementing vision – the ability to bring
initiative, method, and discipline to bear on what would otherwise be
only fancy.
At
CIPD, we apply advanced research in management and engineering to the
best industrial practices. In the years since we were first established,
we have completed over 200 projects for dozens of companies –
both established and emerging – covering all aspects of product
development, and providing new applications of research to industrial
problems.
Our
portfolio is a versatile suite of seven research initiatives:
- Virtual
Customer: expanding the power of web-based marketing.
-
Distributed Object-based Modeling Environment (DOME):
integrating complex projects in a web-based environment.
-
Information Flow Modeling: mapping the end-to-end
product development process.
-
Platform Architectures:
optimizing product families and product portfolios.
-
Implementation Dynamics:
using system dynamics to understand PD process implementation.
-
PD Enabling Factors: identifying
the crucial factors in successful product development.
-
Effective Enterprise Learning:
understanding the boundaries to knowledge transfer.
“Make
it new,” demanded the poet Ezra Pound. From new communication
methods to new implementation methodologies; from advanced customer
research to comprehensive modeling environments, our Center provides
a meeting place for vision and practice – the ground where ideas,
methods, people, and organizations can join in novel ways.
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