HBS Innovation Management is a Kind of Magic: MBA News

Is innovation management really akin to pulling rabbits out of hats? Harvard Business School’s Stefan Thomke certainly thinks there is much that can be gained from understanding the conjurer’s craft – the business administration professor has been collaborating with magician, Jason Randal, for the past five years

"When you teach innovation, you tell your students that the best practices can come from some of the most unlikely sources," Thomke explains to Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge.

Harvard Business School professor teams up with magician

Thomke’s unlikely source revealed itself when, in 2009, he was left spellbound by a performance Randal gave at Harvard Business School. He thought students might learn a trick or two from a magician’s approach to innovation management and, in this way, a partnership was born.

Thomke and Randal developed a learning experience they term ‘innovation magic’ for an executive education course on product innovation where Randal’s magic is followed by Thomke’s teaching. The idea was a hit and the duo has since published two papers together, the most recent of which – ‘The Magic of Innovation’ – appears in the June edition of the European Business Review.

According to that paper’s abstract, the relevance to those in innovation management lies with a magician’s need to keep coming up with new ways to ‘wow’ an audience – through a systematic process of innovation and adaptation of technique.

“Just as magicians often challenge themselves to take a trick and make it a better experience, managers should constantly ask, ‘What else?’” says Thomke.

He believes that a magician’s attention to detail and need to consider every eventuality is also of great relevance to those in innovation management.

“Magicians have to do a lot of rehearsing and testing, not just so their technique gets better, but also to get a sense for all the contingencies, all the things that could go wrong, so they have a plan for everything,” the Harvard Business School professor points out.

The learning experience Thomke devised with Randal has reached 1,000 executives to date and Thomke believes its success lies not just in the entertainment value, but also in its clear practical application to solving business dilemmas. However he does concede that, “The magic is what makes the innovation part unforgettable.”