Our collaboration with Kansas State
Kansas State was one of the first universities to bite down hard on agile strategy. Working with Jeff Tucker and Dale Wunderlich at the Advanced Manufacturing Institute, we have introduced Strategic Doing to a number of different groups throughout Kansas. At the end of the month, Scott Hutcheson and Liz Nilsen will be in Kansas to provide professional training with The Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development.
Now, Jeff is interested in how we have used Strategic Doing to build multidisciplinary research teams here at Purdue. So, we gave him a few examples:
- We initiated a Strategic Doing process to bring together research teams to respond to the National Science Foundation INFEWS request for proposals. About 60 researchers showed up to our initial meeting. We expected three or four proposals to come out of this two-hour workshop. We got more than 10.
- We have used Strategic Doing to bring together researchers from across Purdue to address the challenges of post harvest feed grain losses in sub-Saharan Africa. These losses are quite significant, ranging from 30 to 40%. Purdue has a wide range of assets to deploy, but these researchers do not necessarily know each other. Through a series of three workshops, we began building the community of researchers in post harvest processing. This initiative was formally launched in October 2016. You can see the website here.
- We used Strategic Doing to bring together a new center on campus around global security and defense innovation. The new Institute has launched after two Strategic During workshops. You can view their website here.
- We are assisting teams that responded to the Discovery Park Big Idea Challenge. This initiative, which is still underway, stimulated a wide range of multidisciplinary teams to work on large scale global challenges.
- We have worked with a range of researchers from Purdue and other universities to develop a statewide strategy for the Internet of Things. Currently, we are working on a pilot project involving roll to roll manufacturing of low-cost sensors.
- Just this week, we’ve been asked to guide a series of workshops to build Purdue’s position in autonomous transportation of people and goods. These workshops are scheduled to begin in April.
The Founder of the Lab at UNA and co-author of Strategic Doing: 10 Skills for Agile Leadership, Ed’s work has focused on developing new models of strategy specifically designed to accelerate complex collaboration in networks and open innovation. He is the original developer of Strategic Doing.