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Innovation can be learned, says University of Queensland's new MBA director

Tim Dodd
Tim DoddEducation Editor
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Tim Kastelle, the new MBA director at the University of Queensland Business School, has the advantage that he has not worked in academia all his life.

He's worked in business – in marketing and management positions – and only after several years, with a variety of real-world experience behind him, did he return to university to do an MBA, then a doctorate, and then became a business academic.

Dr Kastelle, who is originally from the US, says one of his formative experiences was being program director and manager of the campus radio station at Princeton University, where he did his undergraduate degree in economics.

Don't ask people what they need. Ask them what they are struggling with, says Tim Kastelle, MBA director at the University of Queensland.  Tammy Law

Working at this volunteer enterprise taught him people management.

"The interesting thing is there is no stick. You can't force people to do anything. You have to build people skills," he said.

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Lessons live on

He's still in touch with people he worked with there, many of whom have gone into management positions and had the same experience as him. Lessons learnt as a student managing a volunteer outfit assumed greater importance later on.

After that he worked in sales and marketing in office equipment and industrial chemical businesses. Then he moved to New Zealand, where he became the manager of student recruitment at a polytechnic. Then he worked for a software start-up in Brisbane, which unfortunately went the way of most start-ups.

Only then did he return to university to do an MBA and a doctorate at the University of Queensland. Immediately his PhD was finished in 2007, he joined the faculty and taught innovation in the university's MBA degree, which has been named Australia's best by The Australian Financial Review's BOSS magazine in its MBA rankings.

What is his takeaway from ten years of teaching innovation?

He says there are plenty of good ideas out there. But the problem is that companies are not good at executing them, or turning them into something which creates value for people.

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Dr Kastelle's starting point for innovation is: "Identify clear problems people have and try to solve those, rather than just generating ideas and sending them out and hope they hit a need."

And yes, it can be taught.

Customer point of view

People can learn to view the world from the point of view of customers and clients. Don't ask them what they need, he says. Ask them what they are struggling with, and try to solve that problem.

There are a number of methodologies you can use to do this, including design thinking and the lean start-up approach.

But companies wanting to be innovative face a dilemma. Do they encourage everyone to be innovative, as Google did for its first ten years, allowing its engineers to work on projects of their choice for 20 per cent of their time? Or do they corral innovation into a "skunk works" on the side, which lets the rest of the company concentrate on keeping the core business operating smoothly.

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Dr Kastelle says both ways can work. Even though Google cancelled its engineers' 20 per cent time and pushed innovation into a fenced area called Google X, GE went the other way and encouraged everyone to innovate.

But he says companies should avoid building a big innovation program with such things as "innovation champions" and idea management software.

"None of that helps get ideas tested and implemented," he said.

Instead, companies should encourage lots of ideas and then trial them on a small scale to see if they work.

Tim Dodd writes on education specialising in business education, apps and opinion. Based in our Sydney newsroom, Tim covers higher education, schools, vocational education, online education and MOOCs. Connect with Tim on Twitter.

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