017. Hila Lifshitz-Assaf: Open Up to Innovation

TODAY’S GUEST

 

Dr. Hila Lifshitz-Assaf is an Associate Professor at NYU Stern. She is also a faculty associate at Harvard’s Lab for Innovation Science. Her work received the prestigious INSPIRE grant from the National Science Foundation, has been recognized to have a strong impact on industry, and has been taught at a variety of institutions around the world including MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, London Business School, Columbia, and Carnegie Mellon.

 

Hila spent 3 years at NASA, studying their adoption of open innovation processes, which led to many insights and an award-winning dissertation and paper. She continues to investigate new innovation processes such as crowdsourcing, open source, open online innovation communities, Wikipedia, hackathons, makeathons, etc.

 

EPISODE SUMMARY

 

In this conversation we discuss:

[2:47] Covid situation, teaching remotely.

[4:41] Leading COVID-19 hackathons, open innovation.

[10:37] Crisis as impetus for change.

[14:21] Developing curiosity in early childhood. Questioning boundaries.

[19:01] Pre-academic career: law, consulting, listening to people and seeing their psychology as business drivers.

[25:27] Getting interested in innovation, innovation as the "Big Question" of business.

[28:25] Working with NASA, NASA's culture.

[40:22] Open innovation study at NASA.

[48:01] How peoples' identity can hold innovation back.

[53:28] Growth mindset & belief.

[55:34] The pace of change.

[57:30] The causes of dysfunction.

[1:01:09] Embracing a little chaos.

[1:12:14] Bias towards action.

[1:14:10] Remote work & creativity.

[1:22:05] Managing for creativity.

[1:30:24] A short sermon for creative managers.

 

EPISODE LINKS

• Hila's Links
  
  • 🌍 HilaLifshitz.com
  • 🎓 Google Scholar Profile