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MSc in Management Podcast

Ivey Digital Innovation Studio (IDIS)

Nov 10, 2021

In this podcast, Eric Simard talks with Dr. Warren Richie about the IDIS and the Digital Management stream of the MSc in Management.

Transcript

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): Court onto the cloud.

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Warren Ritchie: Oh okay.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): All right.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): Well Thank you everyone for joining my name is Eric smart on the director of operations and MSP admissions here at Ivy Business School i'm joined by my colleague, Dr warm richie who runs our handles and manages the IV digital innovation studios good morning.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): Thanks for joining.

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Warren Ritchie: morning Eric thanks, very much for having me.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): Maybe we can start by just talking about what is a digital innovation studio.

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Warren Ritchie: The Ivey digital Innovation studio is the third leg of a.

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Warren Ritchie: set of courses that are put together to give students, an idea about how digital technologies are disrupting industries and transforming are required transformation inside organizations.

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Warren Ritchie: First courses of course viral Boston and it talks about competing and digital platforms it's really both the marketplace and in digital.

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Warren Ritchie: Digital competition competition in the external environment second course is what I do call digital platform implementation and type of.

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Warren Ritchie: organization prepare to move from being a product and services company to a digital product and services company, and so you learn about how to do adaptive.

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Warren Ritchie: sort of adapted processes inside the it organization inside the enterprise at large do some of the issues that cios and CEOs work with collaboratively start to understand how a transformation.

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Warren Ritchie: takes place, and then the final leg of that three course journey is in fact the ID digital innovation studio or actually practice we practice, looking at the external environment, the industries that our clients are working in we have.

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Warren Ritchie: An opportunity to start to think of what technologies might make sense, then students do a period of.

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Warren Ritchie: simulation code concept work where they're actually trying to think about what technology might be helpful for this client and.

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Warren Ritchie: we've got a lot to pick from and the final piece is putting together an implementation concept for them about how they might actually absorb the technology in the organization so.

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Warren Ritchie: The third leg the studio is really practice and simulating with a real clients context, so the students get a sense beyond just the theoretical and beyond just reading it in a case to actually thinking about this might work in this company to achieve the following.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): That i'm going to stray a little bit from our questions right away because that that answer.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): You know spawn some things in my head in terms of you know process improvement in terms of project management, I think that those are skills that that students actually rehearse or practice in this in this part of the process is that is that fair.

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Warren Ritchie: No you're absolutely accurate we we talked about you know, bringing digital technologies into an organization is not just building a feature on to your company, is it really is absorption.

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Warren Ritchie: You really have to think through How is this going to fit inside our organization and there's a lot of.

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Warren Ritchie: commensurate skills to go with that, like you're mentioning project management around for understanding processes understanding system integration things like API is as granular as that.

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Warren Ritchie: But also, and I think we're going to talk about in a few minutes here there's a lot of book design thinking a lot about being creative a lot about being innovative and the approach to really understand how these technologies really can be leveraged and push to to transform your organization.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): that's great do you mind, maybe talking a little bit about what that you know what what does design thinking mean, first of all, and then advise it an important component of this program right how to students gain that experience and.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): You know what what, why is that an important component is probably the best part of this question.

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Warren Ritchie: Sure, the we're looking at taking uncertain unknown technologies to firms that organizations and trying to come up with creative use.

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Warren Ritchie: Design thinking by its intensive is really around getting into creative thinking is stepping out of.

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Warren Ritchie: sort of logical incremental Problem Solving and getting more into the art of the possible.

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Warren Ritchie: And what we really try to do is is get students to think a little bit differently than they might think in their operations management course are a little bit different than they might be thinking strategy.

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Warren Ritchie: and start to think about a creative and unusual or unconventional sort of use cases for these technologies so.

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Warren Ritchie: I just to keep things simple I I use the the Stanford design thinking model.

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Warren Ritchie: it's it's a five step model with empathize define IDA.

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Warren Ritchie: prototype and test is the basic phases, but a lot of emphasis upfront on the empathize phase for i'm asking students to not only think through what the internal leaders.

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Warren Ritchie: of their clients are thinking about but think through what the consumers of your clients product and service offering are thinking about.

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Warren Ritchie: and think how these technologies are going to aid or assistant meeting unmet needs with the clients current customers, how do we extend the usage of the service, offering to be for the clients.

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Warren Ritchie: customers are really thinking about it, how can we get earlier into their life stage, how can we stay later and their lifestyle and how can we fill the gaps that current service service offering.

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Warren Ritchie: isn't currently filling so it's really about students stepping into the into the shoes of the clients.

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Warren Ritchie: Customers where we get a lot of insight and and it actually is a huge feedback or a huge a bit of learning for the for the clients themselves our students clients, the firm's that we we attract.

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Warren Ritchie: For them to see a view of a customer journey and what it what the customers are experienced at every touch point in that journey.

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Warren Ritchie: And then starting to your recommendations, but we could fill gaps in that so that's why the design thinking, because of its focus on innovation and creativity and really it's the front end lowering of the empathize face.

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Warren Ritchie: The other piece around design thinking because it's intended to be iterative you may get all the way down to a prototype.

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Warren Ritchie: For prototyping sort of idea and realize through the prototyping exercise you discovered, something that you hadn't initially found in the States and so students walk all the way back and run it again.

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Warren Ritchie: sprint's or short or four weeks to come up with a set of recommendations.

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Warren Ritchie: And initially teams are concerned about are they going to have a recommendation for weeks and by the time we run the third spread.

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Warren Ritchie: teams are very confident that they're going to get solutions to recommend now they want to go deeper earlier and they tend to hang in the enterprise space a lot longer looking for yet just those other unmet needs that they might be able to tap into with technology.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): It sounds like a lot of fun I don't think I can join, but that sounds like something i'd like to do myself, maybe, do you feel comfortable maybe sharing an example from this past.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): You know, innovation studios or something or a project that might illustrate the design thinking kind of not only process, but maybe a really good client outcome or a really interesting solution for a client that was you know presented.

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Warren Ritchie: yeah yes, a number of them and every clients unique we have some very large we have chartered banks and we have down to.

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Warren Ritchie: Small companies and 15 employees who are looking to pivot to make a major difference i'll give me, maybe an example from each kind of level about some of the things that have happened, which I think are particularly interesting to me, we had a client that was.

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Warren Ritchie: Fishing company actually and they wanted to focus on sustainable use fishing they didn't want to use nets, they want to use long line single hooks and catch salmon off the west coast and they had clients that were restaurants high end restaurants across the country.

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Warren Ritchie: They, the issue is that they are producing or they are delivering specifically the fish caught a specific way and ship very quickly in a cold chain sort of concept to restaurants, to guarantee the integrity of fish, etc, etc, but they're competing against the.

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Warren Ritchie: Big nets sort of fishing more there's a lot of bycatch a lot of a lot of species substitution what's taking place, so you order what you think is one fish and what's reading is not the fish The challenge was how do you How does that, how does our client salmon fishery.

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Warren Ritchie: differentiate themselves rate at the point of the consumer experience right at the point of the fish being eaten and the student seems recommended blockchain technology.

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Warren Ritchie: DNA testing of fish that comes out to verify that this is in fact date a.

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Warren Ritchie: chinook salmon caught on this day by this boat in this location and then blockchain technology to verify the transactions, all the way down to a qr code on the restaurant table it says today's fish was caught, but here it is blockchain.

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Warren Ritchie: The.

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Warren Ritchie: client CEO that interesting but i'm not sure that this makes and, by the way, how do we in the expense, etc, and his feedback initially was.

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Warren Ritchie: I don't I don't know if this is the direction I want to go and I was just feedback to the team.

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Warren Ritchie: And a day later he called me says i've been thinking about this we've got to do this.

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Warren Ritchie: We have got to get in because, otherwise, how do we differentiate our salmon from all the other farmed salmon and all the other things that show up is salmon.

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Warren Ritchie: And it's we've got to do this, and so it's just that interesting process of students coming with out of the box ideas, using a technology that is.

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Warren Ritchie: People talk about blockchain by putting it into a use case to verify the integrity of the product of the consumers will my humble opinion, actually.

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Warren Ritchie: pay a premium price for what they just need to have a verification so that was one, the second was we had a client a larger client the children's hospital was very concerned about the issue of navigating the hospital.

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Warren Ritchie: And it's a stressful situation, how do I get from here to here how do I find a parking place, how do, how do we stressful for the children stressful for the parents is stressful for everybody navigating the hospital.

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Warren Ritchie: Teams worked on that came up with a series of solutions on how to do that and way finding solutions one of kind of like using ways or uber and other ways or.

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Warren Ritchie: What are the driving nav Apps in a very similar way, using augmented reality so you're seeing what you're seeing but it's the arrows are coming up on your screen.

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Warren Ritchie: And waypoints and estimated arrival time and a number of things like that, and it really extended the use.

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Warren Ritchie: of a lot of existing technologies for product into the inside and basically.

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Warren Ritchie: allowed the teams to or allow the client to start to think you know the navigation journey inside the hospital starts the day the appointment is made.

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Warren Ritchie: and sending a proposed route, so people get comfortable with it and they can look at it and come back it's not all popping up in front of them, which has some anxiety, but okay I got this far, but I haven't got that far.

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Warren Ritchie: And the students recommended ways to measure on time arrival ways to measure anxiety, with the people who were navigating hospital alone at.

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Warren Ritchie: The hospital had thought about way finding applications but hadn't thought about where the journey actually starts they hadn't thought about the anxiety.

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Warren Ritchie: and removing the anxiety about parking about how the transition from the various pieces all come together and I was particularly insightful both of those clients, by the way, have requested follow up projects from the teams.

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Warren Ritchie: And one of those projects is still underway, the other one has yet to be scheduled So those are just two different scales different uses really fun to watch quite like that, and I think rewarding for the students, they tell a good story about it afterwards.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): yeah I can I can absolutely see that sounds sounds very interesting in terms of the different types of projects, projects that students get to participate in or or get to engage with.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): I guess maybe that we can go into how are those partners selected right, how do you search for those organizations and what types of projects to those partners come forward you've given us a couple examples, but is there anything else you want to share in terms of that process.

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Warren Ritchie: And we're really trying to get a range of context for the students to work in so we're we worked last year when the chartered bank will work next year with the Turner bank, I see is always working with a chartered bank on some big banking type issues and it's a different context.

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Warren Ritchie: When you're dealing with 80,000 employee sort of organizations, we work really well established and and.

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Warren Ritchie: it's a mature it organizations, etc, as but it's it's really good for students to really think through what's missing in this and all the way down to, as I said earlier, 15 person companies, we are we're spending last year and will continue to do it.

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Warren Ritchie: In addition to banking and financing health care because it's a it's it's just an important thing referenced the hospital, we will be we've also worked with the extended care facilities we're working with another hospital currently and another project.

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Warren Ritchie: Over a series of hospitals in the region so healthcare as well, large and small profit for profit and not for profit in for this year coming up we're also looking at manufacturing.

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Warren Ritchie: first year we didn't do a manufacturing project, this year we will do manufacturing proud.

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Warren Ritchie: Restructuring workforces making it more difficult for manufacturing concerns to find the direct Labor that they used to be able to depend upon people deciding that manufacturing may not be for me, as a direct Labor.

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Warren Ritchie: And so it's a real issue the the historical other the common sense is that automation will replace Labor well, that was a point of view, and I think there's.

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Warren Ritchie: there's some validity to it, what were happening what's happening right now, a little bit post pandemic triggered is labor's leading manufacturing and.

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Warren Ritchie: manufacturing companies are starting to think we need to have an automation plan that's much more accelerated than what we were originally thinking because we've got boys to fill so it's getting us into interesting things of digital twins and.

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Warren Ritchie: And cobalt explore a human and robot integration of activities where the humans more around quality in the robots around the precision of the of the exercise and.

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Warren Ritchie: they're working together as a different type of skill for.

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Warren Ritchie: The human and I think it's better skill for the human and be more involved in the quality of the process rather than the drudgery of the repetitiveness, these are all interesting automation things and, of course, so much data is generated manufacturing and being able to.

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Warren Ritchie: evaluate the data and understand that this is really interesting so manufacturing's as an interesting spot for us for 2022.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): sounds really interesting as well.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): Maybe you can talk a little bit about what you expect will be the impact of this innovation studio or this you know the series of sprints.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): What will this have in terms of impact on students careers, how are they going to talk about that you know that experience when they go into recruitment opportunities when they meet with recruiters or you know have job interviews, why do you think this is going to be a value to them.

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Warren Ritchie: Confidence digital document confidence some comfort in dealing with uncertainty of.

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Warren Ritchie: unfamiliar technologies and the external environment, how we might bring them inside and practice that innovation in my humble opinion, is something that you can practice and get better at.

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Warren Ritchie: and firms increasingly are starting to make the investments to say we need to try more we need to have more teams evolve with taking technologies and thinking about use cases and thinking about how we bring them in.

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Warren Ritchie: And this prepare students to be much more brave in terms of in terms of thinking about it.

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Warren Ritchie: If you if you worked on a project that involve blockchain if you've worked on a project that involves augmented reality or evolve even drones or 3D printing and all of those sorts of things.

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Warren Ritchie: You see, the use cases in your head already you see the 3D printing basically just eliminates time and distance everything is on demand, when you need it.

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Warren Ritchie: Why warehouse why ship at when you can print it.

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Warren Ritchie: and students now start to look for opportunities to have a sort of thing, so it really is about confidence, but we just completed a survey of students, a assessments of the first session.

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Warren Ritchie: One of the questions is, will you bring up, it is the digital innovation studio with recruiters and over 95% of the students said yes, they intended to discuss this with the recruiters and.

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Warren Ritchie: When I asked them do you feel it was make you more confident in dealing with digital innovation again upwards or slightly over 90% said more confident absolutely.

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Warren Ritchie: When I ask is that a realistic situation that idea is to what they might expect, and these are students who haven't worked full time before mostly.

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Warren Ritchie: Even then they're a little more hesitant that it seems real but they're not quite sure, but they're definitely gonna bring it up with recruiters so but that that's what we're looking for is to give them confidence.

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Warren Ritchie: And to get and basically just showcase because they have the intelligence, they just have that chance to practice.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): Lots of great experiences through this process by the sounds of it so.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): Thank you so much for your time today, this has been really helpful and I think future students are really going to appreciate, you know that the 1520 Minutes of this session.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): In terms of what to expect and what to look forward to when they come to IB in the digital innovation studio Thank you.

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Warren Ritchie: My pleasure.

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Ivey - Eric Simard (he,him): All right, take care okay.