What makes some organizations more innovative than others?

Innovation follows from strategy and structure. A good strategy allows individuals to impose their own imagination towards organizational goals in a coordinated way. Good structure adds incentives that encourage creativity and removes requirements that stifle personal freedom. Together, a simple strategy, strong incentives, and personal freedom make organizations innovative. A complex strategy, weak incentives, and bureaucratic requirements reduce innovation.

About Goran

I am a strategy and innovation scholar and the Entrepreneurial Leadership Chair in Strategic Business Studies at McMaster University's DeGroote School of Business and Visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School. I launched The Clinic at the Ron Joyce Center, an Innovation and Commercialization Lab, at McMaster University. My research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I hold a Ph.D. in Strategy, with a minor in Economics, and an MBA, with a minor in Finance, from the Krannert School of Management, Purdue University. My undergraduate degree is in Business Commerce from the University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management. I completed a Post Doc. in Mathematical and Computational Cognitive Science in Dr. Sebastien Helie's lab at Purdue University.

Email Goran

Applied Strategic Management

Strategic Management is about efficient and effective management and the challenges arising from an ever-changing world. The field of Strategy is one of application, as a source of thinking and experience that creates value for society by making organizations better. The ultimate test of the relevance and value of the field of Strategic Management resides in the practice of management.

The following are some of the teaching and research questions I am interested in. To inquire about a speaking or research engagement, contact me or McMaster Executive Education.

McMaster Executive Education

Strategy

Strategy is the most fundamental decision an organizational leader must make. What makes for a good strategy? Is an incorrect strategy better than no strategy? What makes a decision strategic and what makes a strategy valuable?

Innovation

All organizations dedicate at least some resources to innovation. What makes some better innovators than other? Why is a company like SpaceX more innovative than a company like Boeing? Why do people reject creative ideas, even when espousing creativity as a desired goal?

Environmental Sustainability

Some of the hardest organizational problems are those related to addressing environmental sustainability. Yet, technical and economic solutions exist. Why are we not adopting proven environmental solutions?

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding represents a democratized way to generate, test, and fund new ideas. How will crowdfunding change which ideas make it to market and how can it be leveraged to solve hard problems? How can crowdfunding be used for product testing and innovation?

Research & Interests

Creativity and Innovation

Creativity

The role of internal confidence for creativity
Distractions bias evaluations of idea creativity
The effect of contradictions on individual creativity
Creativity Not Wanted
What’s your Creative Profile?

Innovation

Resource Mobilization

The Effectiveness of Images, Text, and Video
Signalling Entrepreneurial Orientation
Signalling Machiavellianism