Accelerating Innovation for Enterprise Intelligence at KMWorld 2025

Innovation gives companies competitive advantage through ecosystem engagement, said Phil Budden, Senior Lecturer & Diplomatic Advisor, Sloan's TIES (Tech Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy) Group, MIT's Management School.in the morning keynote for the third and final day of KMWorld. He is also co-author of a new book, Accelerating Innovation, published by MIT Press.

Innovation definitions: At MIT, in its REAP program (https://reap.mit.edu), innovation is defined as the “process of taking ideas from inception to impact,”—it’s a match between a “problem” and a “solution.” Note that “technology” is not in the definition. Just because technology exists doesn’t mean people adopt it. Budden advised against being a problem owner—instead, bring the person with the problem and solution holder together, even if they are in very different parts of an organization. One example is machine learning algorithms helping with traffic congestion.

He distinguishes between big “I” Innovation (like R&D/S&T) and small “I” innovation. Big “I” Innovation has formal processes of taking research and teaching at a far horizon. Small “i” innovation signifies a more widely applicable but more modest (‘10%’) behavior/culture, in both public and private sectors.

Ecosystems: Geographic locations are still important. The world is not flat, it’s “spikey.” MIT’s Innovation Ecosystem approach sees the importance of five stakeholders: Entrepreneur, university, government, risk capital/private equity, and corporate. For those in large organizations, it will be key to see the challenges of running innovation inside. The benefits of engaging external ecosystems and firms seeking ‘corporate innovation by engaging entrepreneurs and universities ) need to be strategic. For large organizations in the ‘little i’ space, engaging others in the ecosystem can fill gaps in their portfolio and be a source of enterprise intelligence for them.

Engaging the ecosystem for enterprise intelligence: It can be difficult to get beyond “BAU” (Business As Usual), particular for middle management, who tend to focus on operational tasks to keep the business running. It takes considerable effort and leadership to harness good innovation and entrepreneurial techniques. Entrepreneurs, universities, and risk capital stakeholders are much better at big “I” innovation and are by nature better at “innovation-driven entrepreneurial” techniques out at the further horizons of innovation, especially in the ‘high-novelty zones’ of the matrix, Budden sees the ecosystem as a source of innovation.

Innovation requires Leadership: In large organizations, to achieve innovation requires leadership at all levels with each level having its particular role to play across the “distributed leadership” of the large organizations, with each level relying on the other two to help “pull-through” innovation from idea to impact for the organization. Humans are the challenging parts, not the technology, as people may be reluctant to use new technologies. Having a bright idea doesn’t mean it’s adopted. The “soft stuff,” he said, is actually the “hard stuff.” Successful companies recalibrate based on changes in the ecosystem. The problem is a disconnect between business as usual and transformation.