Andrew Hargadon

The Hargadon Group advises a range of companies, from Fortune 500 firms to start-ups, on the rapid creation of value in new ventures, utilizing a set of well-developed tools and processes for moving rapidly between ideation, testing, and execution of new ventures and for exploring network strategies for exploring and enhancing business models around core offerings.

Clients include Mattel, Inc., Mars/Masterfoods, and Avery-Dennison.

Speaking Engagements

Tapping the Networks of Innovation

Innovation remains one of the most critical yet least understood capabilities for surviving in a rapidly changing global economy. Professor Hargadon combines insights from historic and modern breakthroughs to describe a strategy for innovation that relies less on the lone genius and more on the ability--as individuals and as an organization--to tap your networks and create new and breakthrough innovations from existing resources and opportunities.

Network Innovation:
Finding and creating value in a flat world

Today's business environment offers the means to recreate all but the most complex production systems using networks of supplier and distribution partnerships. The world is flat, but this isn't new. Professor Hargadon talks about how such moments represent historic cycles of innovation and change, about how companies have prospered by effectively embracing these new networks, and about how to develop the organizational competencies needed for seeing and building such network innovations.

Design Rules:
Crafting success in new ventures

"Everyone designs who devises course of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones."
--Herbert Simon.

The difference between successful and failed ventures is often determined by the subtle but critical details of their designs. Not simply the look and feel, or the ease-of-use that endear products to end-users, but also the technical, market, and business choices that provide value and create loyalty among retail partners, suppliers, investors, and others, down to the members of the development team. Using historic and current cases of successful and failed innovations, Professor Hargadon provides framework for understanding how design affects the success of both internal and external change efforts, and for developing design strategies for your own projects.

Workshops

Network Strategies for Innovation:
Building the capability for continuous innovation

How to organize for innovation--even how to think about it--is obscured by myth and hyperbole. This interactive session introduces a network perspective of innovation, using both modern and historic cases to draw lessons from companies that have mastered the capability of continuously innovating. We'll explore the network dynamics behind breakthrough innovations and then move, specifically, to how executives can exploit these dynamics in their individual careers and in their organizations, ending with concrete learnings and actions. Depending on the format, this workshop includes case discussions, analysis of organizational resources and opportunities for innovation, and analysis of effective organizations networks.

Building Innovative Leaders

Opportunities for innovation are often fleeting--these are then moments where old competitors gain share and new ones gain a foothold. These moments are not the time to invest in innovation. Individual creativity and organizational innovation depend more on what people have do before they face a crisis or recognize an opportunity, and what they do afterwards, than on the moment of opportunity. This workshop outlines the necessary environment for individual and group-level innovation and provides participants with standardized metrics for considering their own innovation skills and crafting plans for strengthening them. Depending on the format, the workshop includes case discussions, analysis of individual networks (done as pre-work), and the crafting of individual development plans.

Design Rules for your Venture

Combining historic examples with cases of past projects in your industry and organization, this workshop introduces the framework of Design Rules to shift the focus of change efforts from solving the organization's problems to solving the problems of users and other stakeholders in the change effort. Discussion and exercise revolve around a current project in the organization.

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For more information, email The Hargadon Group