PhD Defence: Arabella Pollack

Abstract

Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney, famously said that companies must “innovate or die”. Yet many companies struggle to innovate successfully. This dissertation explores why this might be the case, with a particular focus on misalignment between the mindsets of the managers responsible for gatekeeping the progress of innovative ideas, the creators generating those ideas, and the intended customers of the innovation.

The typical new product innovation process begins with generating creative ideas. Management then evaluates these ideas and select the “best” ideas to move forward. This dissertation considers both of these stages, and examines how effectively managers and creators think about actual consumer preferences. The author conducts several experiments with strong relevance to the business world, including one considering innovations to improve wheelchair accessibility, and one comparing preferences for KickStarter ideas to actual crowdfunding results. We also assess the effects of different professional backgrounds on creativity, by analyzing outcomes from LEGO Masters™, the popular international TV competition.

A key finding is that those with traditional “business” mindsets perform poorly in both creative and selection activities. This is particularly relevant to organizations that rely on management to select innovation ideas, as it suggests they may be poor judges of what their customers actually want. The dissertation provides suggestions on how design thinking, a popular approach to creativity, could also improve idea selection, while offering quantitative insights into how design thinking works. These contributions help build understanding of where business innovation may go awry, and potential interventions to improve innovation outcomes.