Overview

From emerging technologies to changes in consumer tastes, tremendous opportunities and threats often begin as weak signals from the periphery. How good is your organization at sensing, interpreting, and acting on these signals? George S. Day calls this capability peripheral vision—and his research (with co-author Paul Schoemaker) shows that less than 20 percent of firms have developed it in sufficient capacity to remain competitive.

In this session you will learn about a systematic process for developing peripheral vision and receive practical tools and strategies to increase your ability to sense to changes in the environment. This ability can have a powerful impact on your organization's innovation success rate.

Specifically George Day will tell you how to:

• scope widely and ask the right questions;
• scan actively in the right places;
• interpret what signals mean;
• probe carefully for more information;
• act wisely on signals before competitors do.

The biggest dangers to a company are the ones that weren’t seen until it was too late. Anticipating these threats – and recognizing new opportunities for growth – requires strong peripheral vision.

Takeaways

·         Access to slides used during the session via webinar technology

·         Your questions answered live by an expert during the session with follow up questions by email

·         Summary set of slides available to participants after the session

·         FREE copy of Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals that Can Make or Break Your Company

*  Note: This is the first session of Management Roundtable's "2010 Innovation Leadership Guru Series"

Session Leaders

George S. Day is the Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor, Professor of Marketing and co-Director of the Mack Center for Technological Innovation at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He previously taught at Stanford University, IMD (International Management Development Institute) in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the University of Toronto, and has held visiting appointments at MIT, the Harvard Business School and the London Business School. Prior to joining the Wharton School, he was Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute, an industry-supported research consortium.

His primary areas of activity are marketing, the management of emerging technologies, organic growth strategies, organizational change and competitive strategies in global markets. Dr. Day obtained his doctorate from Columbia University in 1968. He presently serves on five editorial boards and has authored fifteen books in the areas of marketing and strategic management.

His most recent books are Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals that Can Make or Break Your Company (with Paul Schoemaker) published in 2006, Wharton on Dynamic Competitive Strategy (with David Reibstein) published in 1997, Wharton on Managing Emerging Technologies (with Paul Schoemaker) published in 2000, and The Market Driven Organization, published in 1999. He is the co-editor (with David Montgomery) of the 1999 special issue of the Journal of Marketing. He has also published in the Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Planning Review, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Sloan Management Review, and Strategy & Leadership.

What you will learn

In this session you will learn about a systematic process for developing peripheral vision and receive practical tools and strategies to increase your ability to sense to changes in the environment. This ability can have a powerful impact on your organization's innovation success rate.

Specifically you will learn how to:

• scope widely and ask the right questions;
• scan actively in the right places;
• interpret what signals mean;
• probe carefully for more information;
• act wisely on signals before competitors do.