Industry Workshop on Organisational Ambidexterity

Members of the Performance Management Cluster at the Whitaker Institute for Innovation and Societal Change in association with Deloitte delivered a very successful workshop for the medical device industry on Thursday 26th November in the G Hotel, Galway attended by senior managers from medical device companies and the accounting profession. This workshop was designed to bring together industry, the profession and academia.

Professor Breda Sweeney presented findings from a recent survey study conducted with Professor Josep Bisbe, Esade Business School and Dr David Bedford, University of Technology, Sydney on organisational ambidexterity. She talked about the vulnerability of radical innovation and the tendency for performance management systems to incentivise incremental innovation. She presented findings on the most important KPIs for managing innovation and the importance of a balanced set of performance measures combined with debate and discussion to generate cognitive conflict. Findings show the need to encourage cognitive conflict in organisations that seeks to be ambidextrous and engage employees in both radical and incremental innovation. A panel discussion with John Power, CEO Aerogen, Ray Cantwell, Finance Director Medtronic and David Kelly CFO Arravasc followed. They provided very interesting insights into the use of KPIs for measuring innovation, the importance of conflict in organisations and the need to strive for ambidexterity from the perspective of different size organisations.

Key speakers and panel members: Ray Cantwell, Finance Director Medtronic, David Kelly CFO Arravasc, Prof Breda Sweeney, Dr Emer Curtis, John Power CEO Aerogen, Ger Casey, Partner Deloitte.