THIS page, and all the pages in this directory, are out of date. They are left here for historal reference to the first efforts on the Bachelor of Innovation(SM) and Collge of Innovations efforts at UCCS. The actual program has made substantial changes from this early draft, which was itself a revision of the 2003 draft. Please see http://innovation.uccs.edu for the current version

A College of Innovation at the
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

“Fortune favors the bold.” Virgil (70 BC - 19 BC)

The rapid pace of change has transformed the world into an innovation economy. Innovation has become the driving force, one that stresses agility, adaptability in an organization. We seek to educate students to excel in this new economy and do research to drive it, yet many expect the century old model of university operations to remain static. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “We must become the change we want to see”. If we want to change students to be innovators, if we want to provide meaningful innovations to society, we must be willing to, nay, we must seek to, be innovative in our organization and change the way we operate. If we are to succeed as innovators, we must embrace innovation at the very core of our organization.

The campus is discussing the viability of the college of innovation idea. While the vision was broad, the initial documents tried not to overstep the bounds of political “authority” of the engineering school where the ideas originated. There has been a positive reception of the general concept which lead to the broader discussions around a experiential university including a broader college of innovation. This document describes the more general form of that vision and details some details on the structural aspect of a COI based on a matrix organization. This presentation addresses 5 primary issues::

1. A vision for the College of Innovation
2. Who would be involved in an (idealized) COI
3. College of Innovation Matrix structure
4. Why have a College of Innovation
5. Why a matrix organization in a COI

A separated and more detailed document on “Operations in a matrix organized COI “ is in development. This does not address the proposed innovation majors.

A vision for the College of Innovation

Who would be involved in an COI

In the long term view, the COI is expected to operate as a matrix organization and will structured to allow rapid changes in its offerings, and hence, the associated faculty. Innovation, in one form or another, is ubiquitous. Almost every department on campus addresses invention and research, and many are actively trying to be innovative in their educational approach. But invention is not innovation, and application of innovations, while important, cannot be the central focus.

It is proposed that the COI initially focus on innovation combining technological and scientific areas with the business. These areas are the initial focus for three primary reasons.

First it is because they are generally regarded as the engine of the “innovation economy” (e.g. see BusinessWeek online, http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/041001/b3903402_1.html). This relation to economic growth will provide a the impetus for companies to partner with us and fund project teams.

Secondly these areas, especially engineering and business, have seen declining enrollments and hence it is imperative that a substantial change be made in their operation. These are areas where students choice of college significantly depends on their perceived marketability after graduation. The COI, combined with new programs, offers an important change and a possibility for these program to recapture the lost enrollments. Letting the initial focus of the COI be on these areas increases the marketability of the college and its new programs to students in these areas.

Thirdly, to include too many different topics within the college, and too diverse a range of faculty, increase the chance that the novel matrix organization of the COI will become unworkable. After the university develops experience with the model it may well choose to expand the college to have a broader focus.

Involvement, however, does not necessitate a degree program or a faculty's primary membership being in the college. The College , in particular the School of research and applied innovation within it, will include affiliated faculty from across campus. The new majors being proposed may cross College boundaries, e.g. there could be a bachelors of arts in innovation with a concentration in psychology. Thus faculty from other areas will be affiliated with (and hence involved) just not initially homed within the COI.

Unlike the traditional college model, where majors requires courses from other colleges/programs without representation of from those areas, the college of innovation will invite active participation and team membership from faculty in programs that are involved in colleges degree program. The matrix organization and program/function focused teams will give these faculty a voice both in resource allocation and in program content.

College of Innovation Matrix structure

The basic concept of a matrix organized structure is a separation of key “products” and the resources needed to realize the products. While a hierarchical structure usually binds these two tightly together in a matrix they are separate. Matrix organizations can still have a range of structures, e.g. process-based, function based or balanced. It is proposed that the College of Innovation be organized as a matrix, with a process (degree) oriented model. This matrix organization, is generally considered a boundaryless organization structure, and when combined with the strong experiential nature of the programs to be offered, is a major step toward the CU system vision of “a university without walls”.

The College of Innovation would, initially, house 3 or 4 schools:

• the school of business and entrepreneurship, and

• the school of engineering and science,

• the school of applied inter-disciplinary innovation and research

• (possibly) the school of international issues in innovation

  with a single dean for the college with 1-2 associate deans.

These schools would provide have administrative oversight, with no budgetary/resource control, of the degree programs in their respective areas, and would be involved in their faculty's tenure. The first two of these would be teaching oriented schools focused on undergraduate. The third would be focused on graduate education, research and inter-disciplinary (as opposed to multi-disciplinary) projects. The final component would be focused on developing and supporting the international interactions including international students and partnerships involving trans-national teams. Faculty in the college would be associated with one or more of the schools with one “home” school. The performance contracts for each faculty will be individualized, as discussed in the section on matrix organization. Faculty, however, report to multiple teams and so their performance reports have multiple sections.

There would be no academic “departments” or chairs in the traditional sense of the word. There will be program (process) teams that provide oversight and make resource requests for particular programs. As undergraduate and graduate programs in the same area are independent (though complementary spillovers), they would have separate, though likely overlapping, oversight committees.

The matrix would also have functional “teams” that transcend program boundaries , e.g. IT support, administrative support, extended studies. These would be focused on the functional roles serving the different “clients”. Thus rather than a secretary for department X, there might be 1-2 undergraduate assistant, 1-2 graduate assistant, one financial assistant and one research program assistance for the whole college.

A central role in the matrix structure is the resource allocation process. In a matrix there are no hierarchical resource decision, the overall good of the organization is used to determine the allocation of resources to teams who then have direct operational control of them. Resources include personnel, space and general funds. Personnel are not whole units, rather they include faculty teaching effort, faculty research effort, Instructor teaching effort, honoraria teaching effort, and an individual may be assigned as a resource to multiple teams (with a total allocation of 100% of their university time). Resources may be allocated for different periods of time, allowing a certain level of longer term planning by a team. As in a traditional matrix, resource decision rest with an individual (the dean), generally supported by a committee.

Important in the matrix organization is the ability to incentivize personnel and for management to set clear objectives and metrics for performance. The new structure will necessitate a move to more individualized semesterly or yearly performance contracts with personnel that state their objectives and performance metrics. Note this is not a new requirement or effort, just a formalization of what each chair has verbally done in the past.

In discussions with different faculty there have been some novel suggestions for the structure that have some interesting potential and should be explored. Here are a few (translated to the terminology of this presentation).

• Having the school of inter-disciplinary innovation be a school without tenure,

• Having the school of inter-disciplinary innovation be a school with a very serious tenure filter, only having faculty with research records comparable to Carnegie I research schools.

• or organizing where the faculty associated with it do not get pay but run

Why have a College of Innovation

There are many reasons to have a College of Innovation and some arguments against it. This section briefly reviews both the Pros and the Cons. Some are addressed in more details in other sections.

Pros:

• Forming a College of Innovation sets a tone and suggests a cultural change that is important in having the new degree programs in innovation taken seriously

• Forming a College of Innovation provides the opportunities to do external fund raising (both from foundations and from places like Department of Ed and NSF, and from corporate americia.

• Forming a College of Innovation can address the longer term issues of competitive programs in existing engineering and business as the new majors bring increased students and improve recognition of the existing programs as well.

• The College of Innovation will address a national need, and can quickly become a national leader. (In a recent national survey commissioned by GE, only 9% of college students polled indicated that they felt the United States is Doing enough to foster Innovation among young people”).

• The College of Innovation's unique structure allows more efficient utilization of resources and better matching of resources to the dynamic needs. The fluctuations in students interests (i.e. majors) are larger and more rapid than a traditional departmental model can efficiently address.

• The name “College of Innovation^TM” is new, meaning people won't have preconceived ideas about it. They will have to look at it to understand it. But that also means we can “Trademark” it to protect is as intellectual property and hence improve its role in branding.

• The name does not contain any of the terms science, engineering, technology, business, entrepreneurship that would make a subset of the stakeholders more comfortable, but make another subset uncomfortable.

• The College of Innovation can become a positive focus of change (rather than a negative perception on budget cuts.

• Having “schools” within the college allows faculty to express their affiliation in a more traditional way if desired, E.g. Prof X from the School of Business and Entrepreneurship at UCCS.

• The uniqueness (and potential trademarking) will allow it to be a marketing and branding tool for UCCS.

Cons:

• The name College of Innovation is new, so people won't know that it means, and that make some faculty uncomfortable.

• Setting up a new college will take money (but even in the short run may save more than it costs, and may allow fund raising to cover these costs)

• It may need approval of CCHE which means it will take a long time

• The new structure and multiple reporting may be confusing for faculty.

• The new structure will have a more complex/confusing tenure process may negatively impact the ability to attract good new faculty.

• Existing faculty culture will be disrupted and the cross-disciplinary teaching may cause resentment.

• The non-traditional structure may impact the ability to earn accreditation.

• “Schools” with no authority limits their ability to ensure their program quality (then again so do budget cuts)

• Separate “schools” could increase the administrative overhead (but not of they have no “resources” other than a fraction of faculty time for that committee).

• Putting under-performing groups together is not a good model for a successful merger.

Why a matrix organization in a COI

The College of Innovation is more than a name, a mission and a vision. The organizational structure of this new college MUST facilitate the cultural change that must occur if the university is to truly ‘innovate’ with this new distinctive feature. Innovation requires strong community partnerships, agility in forming teams and reacting to opportunities, a willingness to focus research on topics, processes, and development that will have serious relevance and benefits for parts of society, and a real commitment for collaboration. The current academic structure involving departments based on disciplines limits this new innovative culture. Neither do the current faculty rewards, incentives, and workload mechanisms support the agility and multi-tasking needed to support innovation. The new College of Innovation must not only teach and do innovation, it must itself be organized innovatively. A new organizational structure is needed to harness diverse talent, knowledge, and skills and direct them towards supporting the innovation process.

There are plenty of different organizational structures, many simple variations of the hierarchical departmental model current in use in academicia The COI proposes that the new structure be based on a version of the matrix organization, where outcomes (e.g., graduates, innovative ideas,or research) are paired with resources (e.g., faculty, space, money, etc.), or functions (e.g., reviewing admission material) that are distributed across projects.

“The organizational chart is becoming increasingly irrelevant as a definition of job identity and accountability. Traditional hierarchical structures with clear lines of authority, unity of command and discrete accountabilities simply don’t adequately respond to today’s unstable, unpredictable and “realtime” business environment. Who you report to is less relevant than who you work with — which increasingly includes colleagues, partners and customers in the context of virtual workgroups and communities of practice. Your individual competencies, relationships and accountabilities mean more today than your job title or description. Reporting relationships yield to workflow processes and interdependencies. You typically report to multiple bosses, team leaders or process owners, and you struggle with potential conflicts, ambiguity, blurred boundaries, and multiple and competing objectives. Welcome to the new matrix organization, a structure that has emerged as the predominant means to harness diverse talent, knowledge and skills across boundaries of time and space in response to the unstable, complex and diverse global marketplace.” - Michael Bell, Gartner

At first glance those familiar with matrix organization theory might not see its applicability to academic structures. The classical discussions and most commercial applications address issues between product-line and geographic oriented management styles. While that may be the outward appearance, more fundamentally matrix organizations excel at addressing conflicting resources demands that arise along different dimensions. The goal of a Matrix organization is to more effectively utilize resources, being agile in response to new constraints while simultaneously supporting investment in future opportunities.

In their papers on Matrix Organizations, D. Baron and D. Besanko of Stanford have examined how matrix organizations and when they are most appropriate. One of their key insights is that matrix organizations are preferable to a geography or a product oriented organisation when there are conflicting “spillovers”. A classic example of conflicting spillovers, which applies to universities, is when different product lines (e.g. departments or programs in the university) can benefit from economies of scale but when those products are substitutes on the demand side (i.e. students major only in one program). (For details on why , in a pure business context, this is the case see http://gobi.stanford.edu/ResearchPapers/Library/RP1397.pdf).

When there are conflicting spillovers, the products groups are effectively competing for resources, and often duplicating resources, in a way that does not benefit the overall organization. This is exactly the situation faced in most universities, we often compete for students and other resources in what is somewhat of a zero-sum game. We need to focus on organizational issues that increase overall resources, not fight over which group is getting what share of the current student pool and resources.

There have been some other “new organizations” that have arisen in discussion with other faculty. The most relevant being the “hypertext organization”. While this organization (most common in larger Japanese firms) is considered by many to be better for “knowledge acquisition” than a matrix organization, that analysis does not really apply to a university. The hypertext organization needed to introduce a third layer to focus on knowledge acquisition because in a traditional company the front lines are generally addressing a product that is not about knowledge. However in a university our primary products re knowledge base and so the primary teams already have a knowledge focus and we would gain little from a hypertext organization's knowledge teams. Furthermore the single reporting aspects and more bureaucratic organization of a hypertext organization do not address the issues of efficient utilization of resources. They may be effective in a large organization where many specialized people can be supported, and are less of an issue in corporate structures where people can be moved from one group to another or simply let go when a division is shrinking. Those characteristics do not apply in a university.

The primary reasons to move to a matrix organization are to be more responsive to our products (student and research) while improving efficiency. A critical issue in any matrix-based organization is placing resource allocation decisions in a larger context. It seeks to make decisions that are good for the overall organization, even if not always the best choice for a particular unit. Efficiency can be realized because under uses resources are not sequestered in isolated units, but can be brought into a general pool. It can also reduce the redundancy and wastes that occurs when multiple independent units pursue nearly identical agendas.

Another reason a matrix is well suited to a college of innovation is the expectation that resources can be shared across teams. In a multi-city company this often requires virtual teams to provide the needed skill base and overall resources for a team. But in a single campus university this is not a concern. Furthermore, the teaching resources, especially for the lower level courses, can be taught by a wide range of people, e.g. most engineering faculty should be able to teach introductory mathematics, science and statistics, and many could teach technical writing. It is quite practical to team-teach courses so the units of teaching resource allocation can be even smaller than a course and combine complementary skills from multiple faculty.

The matrix improves utilizations of resources in multiple ways , many of which will enhance the educational and research missions of the university in ancillary ways. We discuss two such benefits.

First and foremost, the matrix approach depends on multi-disciplinary teams to produce its products. This will engage the faculty in multi-disciplinary team activities, akin to those in which we expect our students and our graduates to engage. This will both help hone our skills as faculty and to make us more relevant role models for the majority of our students. If we want to stress multi-disciplinary teams for our students, we need to live it ourselves.

A second ancillary benefit of changing to a matrix organization will be how it helps the community relate to the universities. To many, academics are stuck in their ivory towers where the inwardly oriented, centuries old discipline-based organizational structures of the industrial age can no longer provide the breadth of knowledge required to address the complex problems of the 21st century. The change in structure will signal to many that we are serious about change. The university can leverage that as a tool for fund raising and to help improve our reputation.