Overview of the Consortium for Corporate Entrepreneurship

A Research Directorate, which is part of the Stevens School of Business Stevens Institute of Technology

Mission:

To significantly increase the success of transformational businesses, products, processes and service through an evidence-based approach.

Transformational innovations

Transformational innovations reframe existing categories and build on the competencies, channels and brands of the existing organization. Examples are Apple’s iPod bundled with iTunes and Crest’s white strips which brought teeth whitening out of the dental office directly to the consumer. This contrasts with sustaining innovations which are incremental improvements to existing products. The consortium focuses its efforts on evidence-based studies.

Brown, B. and Anthony, S. “How P&G Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate,” Harvard Business Review, 2011

Evidence-based studies

History:

The consortium was founded by Ethicon (a division of Johnson and Johnson) and ExxonMobil in 1998.

Activities:

Symposiums:

The consortium typically conducts two symposiums a year which bring in leading academics and consultants on state-of-the-art topics. Each consortium meeting consists of two parts: knowledge sharing among companies on topical areas and an in-depth discussion on the meeting topic facilitated by the invited consultants who are pioneers or leading thinkers on the topic. Examples since 2020 are indicated below:

Oct 2020: Business Model Hypothesis Testing

The objective of this symposium is to focus on how to do better and more rigorous hypothesis testing when employing lean startup methodology which is a hypothesis driven methodology which favors experimenting over planning.

Consultants: Arnaldo Camuffo Professor of Business Organization and Alfonso Gambardella, Professor of Corporate Management both from Bocconi University, in Milan, Italy. Published one of the first studies showing the importance of developing rigorous hypothesis as part of the lean start-up approach.

May 2021: Best Practices for Testing and Experimentation in Transformational Innovations

Oct 2021: Implications of Navigating a Major Disruption such as COVID-19

Feb & March 2022: Portfolio Management Strategy Tools and Techniques for Transformational Innovations

Nov 2022: Organizational Readiness for Transformational Innovation

May 2023: Team Creation and Formation During the Different Stages (Ideation, Incubation and Scaling) of the transformational Innovation Process

Nov 2023: Implementing Transformational Innovation – State of the Art I

Research:

On topics of interest which help inform the consortium as to who are the key informants and trends of cutting-edge topic.

Front End of Innovation (FEI) skills and activities that a company needs to achieve robust growth and sustained profitability.

Research resulted in five peer reviewed articles, with over 2200 citations, which helped identify the front end of innovation as a critical part of the innovation process. This work also helped establish the popular FEI practitioner conference which is now in its 18th year.

Completed.

Business Model Innovation Outside the Core. Why is it so difficult for large successful companies?

Creating prodigious innovators through network analysis.

Determining how to effectively apply lean startup methods in large enterprises.

Leadership Challenge in Transformational Innovation in Large Incumbent Firms.

Understanding the use of Generative AI in Innovation.

Knowledge Dissemination:

The director of the consortium, Professor Peter Koen, has developed three separate workshops which bring together the learning from over two decades of research done external to the consortium, funded by the consortium and learned in the consortium symposiums on 1) Understanding the front end in sustaining, transformational and disruptive innovations and 2) understanding how to apply lean startup principles to actual transformational innovations in large corporations.

Consortium Director: Peter Koen

Peter Koen is an Associate Professor in the Stevens Institute School of Business. Peter has also extensively published articles on the front end and founded the popular practitioner front end conference – which is now in its 19th year in the US and coined the term FEI. In addition, he teaches courses on Human Centered Design and Corporate Entrepreneurship. He has 19 years of industrial experience. His academic background includes a BS and MS in ME from NYU and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University. peter.koen@stevens.edu