![\"innovation_350\"](\"https:\/\/magazine.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/legacy\/2012\/05\/innovation_3501.jpg\" "\\"innovation_350\\"")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
For David Owens, innovation on a personal level can be hard-wired.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am genetically an engineer,\u201d he says. \u201cMy wife remarked one day as we were traveling, \u2018Why do you always have a bag full of wires when we go on vacation?\u2019 It\u2019s just always been part of my identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a business level, innovation is a much slipperier commodity, says Owens, who studies the subject as Professor of the Practice of Management and Innovation at Vanderbilt. Although all businesses rely on timely innovation, most of them too often block it, according to Owens\u2019 latest book.<\/p>\n
Creative People Must Be Stopped: Six Ways We Kill Innovation (Without Even Trying)<\/em>, published in 2011 by Jossey-Bass, takes a clear-eyed look at six levels of stumbling blocks we unintentionally place in front of new ideas and their implementation. \u201cI believe that everyone is creative, that everyone can and will move toward positive change given the opportunity,\u201d Owens says. \u201cMy interest is understanding ways we stop people from doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n At each of those six levels\u2014self, group, organization, industry, society and technology\u2014innovation faces resistance. \u201cTake the organizational level,\u201d he says. \u201cImagine the monumental courage it would take at Kodak in the \u201980s to say, \u2018Guys, I think we should stop doing film.\u2019 It would be hard even for those people who knew that film\u2019s days were numbered.\u201d<\/p>\n He cites the Segway, a two-wheeled electric vehicle, as an invention whose potential on paper hit the brick wall of societal realities. \u201cThe Segway was too fast for the sidewalk and too slow for the streets,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s not a technical problem. They didn\u2019t need the battery to last longer or to make the handlebars more comfortable. It was the societal restraints that they failed to address.\u201d<\/p>\n Fighting the roadblocks that we and others throw in front of our own and each other\u2019s creativity is at the core of Owens\u2019 work as a teacher, mentor and consultant to organizations like NASA and the Smithsonian Institution. His is an almost counterintuitive approach.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not, \u2018Here\u2019s how to be creative,\u2019 but rather \u2018Here\u2019s how to stop your existing creative ideas from being blocked or killed,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThe punch line of the book is that there are at least six different ways to look at innovation, and you should pay attention to all of them because each one has the power to help you find the hidden barriers your innovation will face. What I find is that it\u2019s the one perspective you ignore that ends up biting you.\u201d<\/p>\n He sees creativity and innovation play out in real time as a mentor at the Entrepreneur Center, a Nashville-based nonprofit that connects entrepreneurs with investors and resources, and as Faculty Director of the Vanderbilt Accelerator Summer Business Institute for undergraduates and recent college graduates.<\/p>\n \u201cProjects in the Accelerator,\u201d Owens says, \u201ctouch all aspects of business\u2014marketing, finance, operations, HR, manufacturing, strategy, design\u2014and the program allows these students to experience the entire span of what happens in business in just a few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n He has watched any number of students carry ideas generated, refined or actualized at Owen into careers. He points to students who have gone on to do innovative work at places like Apple, Mattel, Microsoft, Google and Nissan. Another he cites is Jerome Edwards, MBA\u201904, Founder, President and CEO of Veran Medical Technologies, a St. Louis-based company that has developed cutting-edge imaging technology for surgical procedures.<\/p>\n Before earning his MBA at Vanderbilt, Edwards worked for Medtronic, one of the world\u2019s leading medical technology companies. There he built a voltage-based navigation system that guided catheters inside the heart to burn tissue and regulate heartbeat. That technology, however, was spun off into another company and ultimately acquired by a Medtronic competitor in a $273 million deal. It was then that a frustrated Edwards decided to start a new chapter in his career.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t going to let that happen again,\u201d he says. \u201cMedtronic had been a great company to work for, but I decided to leave and go back to business school.\u201d<\/p>\n A Dean\u2019s Scholar, Edwards enrolled at Owen in 2002 because he says, \u201cI felt at home and felt the entrepreneurial spirit.\u201d That feeling was shared by fellow student Evan Austill, BS\u201993, MBA\u201904. The two teamed up and started writing business plans for the type of technology Edwards developed at Medtronic, but for different organs. Edwards and Austill were encouraged by Germain B\u00f6er, Professor of Accounting and Director of the Owen Entrepreneurship Center, as well as former faculty member Bruce Lynskey, MBA\u201985. Edwards says Owen\u2019s center \u201ckept putting me in great opportunities in terms of business plan competitions and showcasing the plans to alumni.\u201d<\/p>\n After receiving $65,000 in grant money, Edwards and Austill founded Veran Medical Technologies and paid for the first patent, which was written in the 810 Caf\u00e9 at Owen. That patent was for a device that acts like a GPS system for the human body. An electromagnetic field and sensors are used to steer the device inside the body and then help sample or excise tissue that is suspected of being cancerous. The innovation is in making the device work in the lungs, which continue to move during surgery.<\/p>\n \u201cWith cancer,\u201d Edwards says, \u201cit\u2019s about diagnosing as early as possible. In this case, we can get to the deepest, darkest regions of the lungs, get tissues from suspect lesions and progress to therapy if it\u2019s cancerous.\u201d<\/p>\n With just 28 people on staff, Veran is a small company where, Edwards says, \u201ceverybody participates in R&D\u2014everybody does everything.\u201d The company\u2019s small size and flexible approach have helped it overcome the types of adverse group dynamics and organizational missteps that, according to David Owens, hamper innovation.<\/p>\n \u201cOne engineer in a small company can do the same amount of work as three in a big company because you\u2019re freer,\u201d Edwards says. \u201cProcess is good but it can be burdensome. Here, rather than meeting after meeting after meeting, you just walk in and ask a question, then go back to your desk and get to work again.<\/p>\n \u201cFor us,\u201d he adds, \u201cinnovation is about getting people into the field, having them see surgeries, and coming back and sharing ideas without barriers and without process. Once you get to a level where it\u2019s going to be turned into a real product, then you fold it into effective process.\u201d<\/p>\n For a small number of students, innovative ideas and an entrepreneurial spirit lead to the business world prior to graduation. That has been the case for Adam Albright, BE\u201910, an MBA candidate for 2012. Albright is Co-founder of RentStuff.com, which he describes as \u201ca marketplace similar to eBay for renting rather than selling household items.\u201d He teamed up with his two fellow co-founders when they needed someone with a technical background. Albright, who has been doing freelance software and website development since he was 10, earned his bachelor\u2019s degree at Vanderbilt\u2019s School of Engineering.<\/p>\n Participation in a summer-long incubator program at the Entrepreneur Center provided RentStuff.com with $15,000 in seed capital, mentoring and networking, and the chance to refine their presentations with the help of Michael Burcham, Lecturer of Entrepreneurship and President and CEO of the center. The program also gave them temporary office space.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a couple of desks and white boards, and we make a lot of to-do lists and brainstorm ideas,\u201d Albright says. \u201cPart of my job is to explain the technological complexities behind what we want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0RentStuff.com model takes advantage of a fundamental shift in the way people access everyday goods. Albright cites a phenomenon called \u201ccollaborative consumption,\u201d which he says is when \u201cpeople try to own less stuff and rethink how they consume assets.\u201d He and his partners have drawn inspiration from Zipcar, a membership-based car-sharing company, and Airbnb, which matches people needing short-term lodging with those offering everything from sofas to castles.<\/p>\n RentStuff.com handles payment transfers and security deposits, and offers reviews of people who use the service and the items rented, which include bicycles, cameras and even cocktail dresses. Recognizing that the target demographic skews younger means part of the innovation lies in finessing potential backers.<\/p>\n \u201cSomeone making six figures is not going to be renting golf clubs for $20 a day,\u201d Albright says. \u201cYou have to explain to investors how it would work and who would be interested because it\u2019s a new model and the math doesn\u2019t add up for them. The investors aren\u2019t the ones using it, but they\u2019re the ones we need on our side.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, Albright and his business partners have faced some of the societal innovation constraints that David Owens writes about in his book. Society\u2019s adherence to a conventional way of doing business sometimes prevents more creative approaches from gaining traction.<\/p>\n In the case of RentStuff.com, part of the solution lies in bringing small stores on board and offering to link them to potentially large audiences through the website. \u201cWe can emphasize the rental business side of RentStuff.com to investors, and then add that individuals can do it, too,\u201d Albright says.<\/p>\n He finds that as a businessman, youth can be a mixed blessing. \u201cBeing young, you get a lot of helpful advice,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople are very willing to tell you about experiences they\u2019ve had and pitfalls they\u2019ve faced, and it speeds up the learning process. But when you go to an investor looking for half a million dollars, maybe they\u2019d feel better if you were 50.\u201d<\/p>\n Nashville, he adds, has been a good place to get attention and work out the kinks before carrying the concept to a larger city, where high-density neighborhoods and apartments concentrate the potential market for rental items like carpet cleaners and sporting goods.<\/p>\n Albright also attributes their early success to the company\u2019s domain name. He believes that it has been crucial in driving people to their website. \u201cRentStuff.com is a pretty identifiable name,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to figure out what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n A great name is also the capstone of a highly regarded customer loyalty measure developed by Bruce Cooil, the Dean Samuel B. and Evelyn R. Richmond Professor of Management, and alumnus Tim Keiningham, MBA\u201989, with marketing research firm Ipsos Loyalty.<\/p>\n The Wallet Allocation Rule, as it\u2019s known, came about because traditional metrics gauging customer satisfaction and loyalty \u201cdo a terrible job of linking with the share of category spending that customers allocate to the brands they use,\u201d says Keiningham, the firm\u2019s Global Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President.<\/p>\n That need prompted a two-year study in collaboration with Lerzan Aksoy, Associate Professor of Marketing at Fordham University, and Alexander Buoye, Vice President of Analytics at Ipsos Loyalty. The study examined more than 17,000 consumers in nine countries and covered purchases in more than a dozen industries. A key datum was the number of brands being considered along with relative rank.<\/p>\n In the end, Cooil and his collaborators found that companies would be better served paying attention to how well they rank in comparison to rivals, rather than concentrating on achieving high customer satisfaction levels. According to their research, being a customer\u2019s first, rather than second, choice can have a significant financial impact.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we found shocked us,\u201d Keiningham says. \u201cOur research uncovered a heretofore unknown relationship between customers\u2019 perceptions of the brands they use and their share of wallet that could be easily calculated using a simple mathematical formula: the Wallet Allocation Rule.\u201d<\/p>\n The rule makes it simple for managers to determine the financial implications of rank and of moves up or down, he says. Its implications include the fact that customer satisfaction is best understood in the context of competition, since it can rise even while per-customer spending declines.<\/p>\n \u201cWe looked seriously at alternatives,\u201d says Cooil, who analyzed the data. \u201cYou see other papers that look at converting ranks to market shares using industry-specific parameters. We were expecting to have to go that way, but Alex suggested this other approach, and more complicated methods couldn\u2019t do any better.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s an approach that breaks through the kind of industry constraints and societal barriers that David Owens studies. \u201cWe all start out with an idea of how things work,\u201d Keiningham says, \u201cand this view causes us to seek out information that supports that view and discount information to the contrary. As a result, we get a lot of \u2018motivated\u2019 research to prove what we want to believe.\u201d<\/p>\n Keiningham and Cooil have become close friends through the years: Cooil was a best man at Keiningham\u2019s wedding in Istanbul and has collaborated often with Keiningham and Aksoy, who are husband and wife. Their collaboration plays off their differing approaches and personalities.<\/p>\n \u201cThey get me interested in projects I might not find interesting otherwise,\u201d Cooil says. \u201cI have very different talents from Lerzan and Tim. They\u2019re much more organized, much more focused on what industry really needs to know about, what would really help companies\u2014and they get projects started.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re the ones asking the questions and telling me what the current theory is. I go through and see how the models are working. Then they ask, \u2018What can we do? We have this really interesting data. Can we come up with another approach or do something different with the data or clear up an issue that everyone\u2019s convinced they understand but we\u2019re convinced they don\u2019t understand?\u2019 They\u2019re pretty demanding. They want answers and they keep projects going.\u201d<\/p>\n Their four-way collaboration with Buoye on the paper \u201cCustomer Loyalty Isn\u2019t Enough. Grow Your Share of Wallet,\u201d published in the October 2011 Harvard Business Review<\/em>, earned them the Next Gen Market Research \u201cDisruptive Innovation\u201d Award. It\u2019s a major acknowledgement, although Cooil laughingly dismisses one of the accolades that went with it.<\/p>\n \u201cThey called us \u2018thought leaders,\u2019\u201d he says, \u201cIt\u2019s a mixed blessing because I\u2019ve always hated the phrase. Doesn\u2019t it sound Orwellian? But they did give us these really artsy trophies. I can\u2019t even put mine in my study because my wife wants to put it on the mantel as an art piece.\u201d<\/p>\n Cooil\u2019s and Keiningham\u2019s work is another example of the worldwide impact of innovation with Owen ties. It is a key to what makes Nashville a city with special resonance as a business center for David Owens.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel a real energy here once again,\u201d he says, \u201cwith new startups and tech companies and a level of creativity in Nashville that really make it exciting for me.\u201d<\/p>\n His work in breaking through innovation barriers is aimed at helping to keep the Owen School in the thick of that creative energy, as a meeting place of education and innovation that is as good for human development as it is for business development.<\/p>\n \u201cWith Accelerator, as with everything else,\u201d he says, \u201cwe want to help students find that part of the wide spectrum of business that talks to them. I try to expose them to a lot of things to do, to give them enough diverse projects and experiences that they find something that makes them say, \u2018I like marketing\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019m good at managing teams.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI want to offer a perspective on business\u2019 role in society, one that often gets lost,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s so much more than making money. It\u2019s about feeling good about what you do and helping make the world an amazing place. How can you be a contributing member of society? Business is a great way to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For David Owens, innovation on a personal level can be hard-wired.<\/p>\n \u201cI am genetically an engineer,\u201d he says. \u201cMy wife remarked one day as we were traveling, \u2018Why do you always have a bag full of wires when we go on vacation?\u2019 It\u2019s just always been part of my identity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":369,"featured_media":10661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[67,21],"class_list":["post-3660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-spring-2012","tag-submain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/369"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8789,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3660\/revisions\/8789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"David](\"https:\/\/magazine.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/legacy\/2012\/05\/Owens-1501.jpg\" "\\"Owens-150\\"")
Surgical Precision<\/h3>\n
![\"Jerome](\"https:\/\/magazine.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/legacy\/2012\/05\/EDWARDS-1501.jpg\" "\\"EDWARDS-150\\"")
<\/div>\n\u201cFor us, innovation is about getting people into the field,
\nhaving them see surgeries, and coming back and sharing ideas
\nwithout barriers and without process.\u201d<\/h2>\n\u2014Jerome Edwards<\/h3>\n
Renter\u2019s Paradise<\/h3>\n
![\"Adam](\"https:\/\/magazine.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/legacy\/2012\/05\/Albright-4001.jpg\" "\\"Albright-400\\"")
Wallet Allocation<\/h3>\n
![\"Bruce](\"https:\/\/magazine.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/legacy\/2012\/05\/Cooil-3001.jpg\" "\\"Cooil-300\\"")
![\"Tim](\"https:\/\/magazine.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/legacy\/2012\/05\/Keiningham-1501.jpg\" "\\"Keiningham-150\\"")
Special Resonance<\/h3>\n