How To Accelerate Innovation without Killing it?

Hila Lifshitz AssafAssociate Professor, Stern, NYU@H_DigInnovation; H@nyu.edu

Research Motivation

How technological change impacts the process of scientific and technological innovation?

Lone Inventor Labs Collaborative Networks "Open"

?

Researching New Ways of Organizing for Scientific and Technological Innovation

How? How? Why?

Professionals and their Work

The Innovation Process

Let me briefly share with you the NASA study

How? How? Why?

Professionals and their Work

The Innovation Process

Lifshitz-Assaf H. 2018. “Dismantling Knowledge Boundaries at NASA: The Critical Role of Professional Identity in Open Innovation.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 63(4), 746–782.

Longitudinal In-Depth Field Study

Professionals and their Work

The Innovation Process

Pre PostOpen Innovation ExperimentYear 1 Year 3Year 2 Year 4

Behavioral health group

Exploration medical

capability group

Medical flight

hardware group

Advanced food

research lab

SRAG-solar radiation

groupMicrobiology

labBone

labExercise & physiology

lab

SD SF SK

SLSD

Augmenting the exercise experience

Portable scanning

system

Medical consuming

tracking

Medical kit optimization

High barrier food packaging

material

Solar events forecasting

Real time analysis of

microorganism

Preventing growth of

microorganism

"Spongy “bone

imaging

Compact aerobicdevice

"

The Open Innovation Experiment at NASA

Over 3,000 Solvers from 80 Countries participated

Cognitive Diversity: A Wide Array of Disciplines and Professions

Total

Aerospace Engineering

Analytical Chemistry

Appns/Programming Languages

Artificial Intelligence

Biochemistry

Bioengineering

Bioinformatics

Biology

Biomarkers/Diagnostics

BioPhysics

Business & Entrepreneurship

Business Plan Development

Business Process Engineering

Catalysis

Channels & Business Development

Chemical Engineering

Cheminformatics

Chemistry

Civil Engineering

Results Were Successful Beyond ExpectationsThe R&D Problem (as posted online) Solution The platform

1 Improved barrier layers-keeping food fresh in space Partially Solved

Innocentive, Yet2.com

2 Mechanism for a compact aerobic and resistive exercise device Solved Innocentive

3 Data-driven forecasting of solar events Solved Innocentive

4 Coordination of sensor swarms for extraterrestrial research Partially Solved

Innocentive

5 Medical Consumables Tracking Partially Solved

Innocentive

6 Simple microgravity laundry system Partially Solved

Innocentive

7 Augmenting the Exercise Experience with Audio Visual Inputs - Innocentive

8 Bone imaging- IA clinically-useful technology sensitivity to assess the microstructure of “spongy” bone

PartiallySolved

Yet2.com

9 Preventing growth of and removing microorganisms and bio-films from a potable water system

Partially Solved

Yet2.com

10 Real-time analysis and reporting of water-borne microorganisms - Yet2.com

11 Radioprotectants for humans exposed to chronic and acute radiation - Yet2.com

12 Life on Mars-Seeking protocols - Yet2.com

13 Miniaturized & portable diagnostic scanning systems for remote environments - Yet2.com

14 Medical kit optimization algorithm Solved Top Coder

A “Home Run” Solution for Predicting Solar Flares

This has spun up so fast here and has caught everyone off guard.... Turnaround time for a solution like this could take years!"

Can Innovation Happen Faster?

Lifshitz-Assaf H., Lebovitz S. and Zalmanson L. 2020. Minimal and Adaptive Coordination: How Hackathons’ Projects Accelerate Innovation without Killing it. Academy of Journal, in- press.

Hackathons have become very popular due to “Accelerating Technologies”

As well As Urgent needs for new solutions

From an “innovation journey” à to a sprint!

What Does it Mean to Accelerate Innovation?

à What would existing literature predict?

Intense time pressure creates vicious cycles of “time famine” (Perlow, 1999) that impede performance, especially for creativity and innovation (Amabile, Hadley, & Kramer, 2002).In such settings, cyclic work, routines, or rhythms do not yet form and thus require an exploration of the emergent “temporal work” (Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2013)

Time Pressure Impedes Creativity

Challenge #1: Time Pressure kills Creativity

Ad-hoc, contemporary organizing brings myriad coordination challenges of uncertainty and ambiguity around coordination, role assignment and division of labor (Bechky, 2006; Valentine, 2017)

Two important and challenging questions for the team:1. What are we trying to develop?

2. How are we going to work as team to develop it?

Challenge #2: Ad-hoc Team Coordination is extremely hard

Yet, new products do get created this way!

To Investigate This Puzzle, We conducted a field study

1 year of Exploratory study of Hackathonsà

TOM Global13 projects of 2 health-tech accelerated innovation processes in Hackathons with clear and comparable outcomes

Similar conditions across projects--Access to technology and tools--Extremely limited time frame--Ad hoc time frame--Assistive technology challenge

Research Design

Similar Conditions Working Product or Not?

72 Hours

The Difference in paces and duration of the field studies

Crowdsourcing

Vs.

How to cope with different paces of the field as a researcher?

Crowdsourcing

Vs.

Data SourcesI. Observation (in each team, hour by hour tracking)II. Videos and Photos of the product development process

(tracking each product’s components)III. Semi-structured interviews (90 overall)IV. Project work documents and artifacts

13 projects multi case study of their new product development process

Research Design

Data AnalysisAnn Langley’s Process theory: Temporal mapping

FINDINGS

The Accelerated Time Frame Induced Not Only Time Pressure but also Temporal Ambiguity

“You’ve got a team that’s just met each other, and you have to figure out all these group dynamics. And you’re given a challenge that you’re expected to start working on and making a solution right away” [Beth].

“The sense I got from everybody in the room was:‘What are we doing?’” [Ruth].

TEMPORAL AMBIGUITY

Some teams dealt with it by importing & compressing temporal structures from their regular innovation process to the extremely limited and ad-hoc hackathon time frame

How did teams deal with the temporal ambiguity?

“ I think that those [Agile and Scrum] are really good frameworks for a team.…So like speed that up in the hackathon. The once-a-day, every-day [stand-up meetings]? Maybe we do it every two hours, or something like that.... We have to take time to do that.”

“We had six weeks to design, build, and test an entire robot.... That was a pretty similar atmosphere. The hackathon is just on a faster scale.”

Full and clear coordination

How did these teams coordinate their work efforts?

“We’re going to divide and conquer. Leah is going to work

on the electrical elements, getting the motors wired up and the

Arduinos set up. Jason is working on structural work in the back,

and Liam is working on building out the pulley” [Sam].

“Our goal is to have it by this afternoon, maybe not the voice

recognition and the servos combined, but definitely to have the

servos working with the different input, as well as getting the voice

recognition working. Then we can bring the two together.”

In a foggy and stormy weather..

Full and clear coordination ~ Course Setting in sailing

THE BAD NEWS…Table 5: Project Processes and Outcome at the End of the Hackathons

Project Name Temporal Structures Nature of Coordination New Product Development Outcome

Basis for Coordination

Coordinating During Development Work

Braille Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning Elevator Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning Sign Language Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning HoloLens Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning iEat Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning Mobile Shelves Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning Parkinson Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning Mobility Now Letting New Temporal

Structure Emerge Minimal Adaptive Fully functioning

Remote Control Letting New Temporal Structure Emerge

Minimal Adaptive Fully functioning

Grabber Letting New Temporal Structure Emerge

Minimal Adaptive Fully functioning

Oxygen Tubes Letting New Temporal Structure Emerge

Minimal Minimal Basic functioning

Prosthetic Arm Letting New Temporal Structure Emerge

Minimal Minimal Basic functioning

Crutches Letting New Temporal Structure Emerge

Minimal Minimal Basic functioning

WHAT ARE THE GOOD NEWS?Table 5: Project Processes and Outcome at the End of the Hackathons

Project Name Temporal Structures Nature of Coordination New Product Development Outcome

Basis for Coordination

Coordinating During Development Work

Braille Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning Elevator Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning Sign Language Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning HoloLens Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning iEat Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning Mobile Shelves Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning Parkinson Importing & Compressing Full Full Not functioning Mobility Now Letting New Temporal

Structure Emerge Minimal Adaptive Fully functioning

Remote Control Letting New Temporal Structure Emerge

Minimal Adaptive Fully functioning

Grabber Letting New Temporal Structure Emerge

Minimal Adaptive Fully functioning

Oxygen Tubes Letting New Temporal Structure Emerge

Minimal Minimal Basic functioning

Prosthetic Arm Letting New Temporal Structure Emerge

Minimal Minimal Basic functioning

Crutches Letting New Temporal Structure Emerge

Minimal Minimal Basic functioning

1. They did NOT try to compress the regular process but instead assumed this requires a different, new process and let new temporal structure emerge

HOW DID THE OTHER TEAMS DEAL WITH THE TEMPORAL AMBIGUITY?

“We have a lot of internal beliefs about what should or shouldn’t be working, but we can’t really say until we build it.…We just have to try it out.…We need to make something to see. Until we see, we won’t know what works.”

“I have had studio projects where we would work together…and spend 72 hours together trying to finish our projects. But I wouldn’t consider that anything like a hackathon because that had been a project that we’d been working on for a long period of time. I haven’t really done anything that’s similar to this” [Beth].

2. They did NOT try to fully coordinate but instead MINIMAL AND ADAPTIVE COORDINATION

HOW DID THEY COORDINATE THEIR WORK?

Within the first hour, participants of one project quickly discussed a rough product design without specific details, writing on a poster taped to a nearby wall: “What we need: Device that connects to oxygen device that can press 3 different buttons via remote control.”

MINIMAL= Start with only a high-level solution, rough idea, not fully detailed or with specific measurements/methods/materials. àThen quickly jump to dividing the work and start working in couples or alone

“We need to solve this problem, but how we get from here to there is pretty open.”

Minimal and Adaptive Coordination

ADAPTIVE= Frequently and swiftly sense where the other team members are and adjusting over time

Avoiding deep discussions

Minimal and Adaptive Coordination

“Don’t spend too much time. Don’t get caught up in the prettiness of it.”

If I had to rate our communication, I would say negative four.”

“We were not a well-oiled machine…but we did what we needed to do and created a product.”

In a foggy and stormy weather..

Minimal and Adaptive Coordination ~ Tacking

Lots of chaos and ambiguity initially and slowly order and clarity emerges. This is better than the reverse…keeps the flexibility and agility of the team!

Minimal and Adaptive Coordination is messy

oiled

Towards a Model of Accelerated Innovation Processes

Full Coordination

AdaptiveCoordination

Letting new temporal structures emerge

MinimalCoordination

Importing and compressing prior

temporal structures

Basic Functioning New Products

No Functioning New Products

Process Output

Reducing Ambiguity

Sustaining Ambiguity

Sustaining Ambiguity

Work Processes Impact on Temporal Ambiguity

Fully Functioning New Products

Conditions

New product development task

Extremely limited and ad hoc time frame

High Temporal

Ambiguity

• Temporality and Innovation• The importance of studying innovation outside the traditional

organizational temporal context• There is no single meaning of acceleration : Do not Assume its

compression!• How to deal with the overwhelming sense of urgency created by the

“age of acceleration”• Having the accelerating technologies is not enough!

• Coordination• The literature assumes full coordination• Do we need cognitive closure in innovation processes today?

Theoretical Implications

Imagine what can be done in 3 days…

Accelerating Innovation in times of crisis

THE GOOD NEWS

A new study: How Organizations responded to the ventilators shortage ? How to accelerate innovation for

ventilates production?

Lifshitz-Assaf, H., Randazzo, S., & Jung, O. 2021. “End-Starting the Innovation Process: How Organizations Redesigned Their Innovation Process in the COVID-19 Pandemic”. In SSRN (Ed.).

THE BADNEWS

Would love to hear what you think!For comments and questions, please contact

Hila Lifshitz-Assaf (@H_DigInnovation; H@nyu.edu)

HOW TO ACCELERATE INNOVATION WITHOUT KILLING IT:Lifshitz-Assaf H., Lebovitz S., and Zalmanson L. In Press. “Minimal and Adaptive Coordination: How Hackathons’ Projects Accelerate Innovation without Killing it” Academy of Management Journal, in press.

AOM insights summary: “Building Urgently Needed Products in Tight Time Frames” (https://journals.aom.org/doi/full/10.5465/amj.2017.0712.summary)HBR: “Embrace a little chaos when innovating under pressure”

THANK YOU