Innovation for Growth: Strategies for Creating Value

Innovation is at the heart of all great companies. It’s what propelled them to where they are and the reason they continue to grow and thrive. For others, internal processes, thin margins, and a focus on the short-term keep them from putting an emphasis on innovation—even as they recognize the often urgent need for it.

Innovation for Growth: Strategies for Creating Value will help you jumpstart your company’s innovation process, providing a full-spectrum, strategic view of innovation and organic growth. You will learn rigorous methods and fresh approaches for identifying new and different growth opportunities, and leave with a roadmap for building innovation capabilities, fostering a culture of continuous innovation, securing resources, and mobilizing to grow faster.

Program Experience

Highlights and Key Outcomes

• Discover innovation opportunities across the full spectrum of growth pathways
• Apply design thinking to connect deep customer insights to technological possibilities
• Allocate resources to the portfolio of innovation initiatives across three horizons of growth
• Manage the risks of innovation using fast prototyping, scenario analysis, and other tools
• Unleash the creative energy of teams
• Apply real-options thinking to contain the risks of innovation
• Build the organizational capabilities needed to enable your growth strategy

Experience & Impact

Emphasizing the essential role of innovation in driving business growth, this program focuses on four key pillars: developing leadership and talent, encouraging risk taking, hearing the voice of the customer, and aligning rewards and recognition. Together, these pillars channel the energy of the organization toward the right actions to take, whether you are a growth leader seeking to stay ahead or a growth aspirer trying to catch up.

Throughout the program, faculty members share the latest innovation strategy knowledge, tools, and frameworks. They draw on examples of successful firms with environments that foster a more collaborative, creative, and risk-taking culture — where even failure is viewed as an opportunity to learn. Tapping into the experiences of organic growth leaders such as Starbucks, Genentech, Alibaba, LEGO, and Salesforce.com, you will better understand how they generate superior customer value and shareholder value through their innovation prowess.

Key takeaways from Innovation for Growth include how to profit from the uncertainty of innovation by spotting opportunities sooner, investing in real options, opening up innovation processes to partners, and adopting start-up methods such as rapid prototyping and crowdsourcing. Participants will also create a growth-affirming narrative to motivate the organization and emphasize the centrality of innovation.

Session topics include:

• Innovate to Grow: Applying Strategic Discipline
• Process View of Innovation
• Building the Business Case for Innovation
• Business Model Innovations
• Creativity and Innovation
• Strategic Management of Emerging Technologies

Through highly interactive lectures, exercises, and case studies, both in the classroom and in smaller work groups, this deep dive into the process of innovation will leave you with a new level of understanding. You will learn that consistent, powerful growth depends on constantly challenging current thinking about customers, technology, and your business. Overall, you will learn how to develop a growth strategy that guides all innovation activities within your organization.

This foundational program is complemented by Mastering Innovation: From Idea to Value Creation and Business Model Innovation in the Digital Age, both of which focus on specific aspects of the innovation process rather than on a full-spectrum, strategic view.

Who Should Attend

Innovation for Growth is designed for business leaders or leaders who are responsible for driving top-line growth and promoting market innovation — including strategy leaders, managers of new businesses, chief innovation officers, chief technology officers, and product development leaders.

Participants in this program are a diverse group of strategy leaders from varied industries, backgrounds, and geographies who share their biggest challenges with the class. Faculty tailor the program content to address these issues, so participants enjoy a learning experience that truly resonates with them and meets their learning needs.

Participants leave the program with an expanded peer network, plus specific tools and frameworks they can use to make a meaningful impact on the way they approach innovation within their companies or organizations.

Fluency in English, written and spoken, is required for participation in Wharton Executive Education programs unless otherwise indicated.

Participant Profile

Participants by Industry

Participants by Job Function

Participants by Region

Faculty Members

• George Day, PhD, Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor Emeritus of Marketing, The Wharton School
• Rahul Kapoor, PhD, Associate Professor of Management, The Wharton School
• Christian Terwiesch, PhD, Andrew M. Heller Professor at the Wharton School; Department Chair and Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions; Professor of Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine; Co-Director, Mack Institute of Innovation Management
• James Thompson, PhD, Adjunct Associate Professor, Management Department, The Wharton School; Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania
• Karl Ulrich, ScD, CIBC Endowed Professor; Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions; Professor of Management; Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, The Wharton School