Innovation strategy in the US: top

executives offer their views

C. Brooke Dobni, Mark Klassen and W. Thomas Nelson

C. Brooke Dobni is a
About the research
Professor of Strategy and
Mark Klassen is an In 2006, Business Horizons published a paper entitled The Innovation Blueprint (Dobni, 2006).
Assistant Professor of The blueprint and proposed metrics described the environment and behaviors necessary for
Accounting both are sustained innovation in an organization. Since then, the metric has been validated and used on
based at Edwards School over 2,000 organizations across North America. This article reports on findings of innovation health
of Business, University of in the USA based on responses from 1,127 Fortune 1000 executives (manager level and higher).
Saskatchewan, The F1000 is a listing created by Fortune magazine comprising the 1,000 largest companies in the
Saskatoon, Canada. USA based on revenues. This survey is considered one of the largest surveys on innovation
W. Thomas Nelson is a culture in the USA to date.
CEO at Lodestar,
Princeton, New Jersey,
USA.
Is the innovation nation still working?
The USA is still the leading economy in the world as measured by the total GDP, but over
the next 20 years, this is predicted to change, as the USA will yield to the economies of
China and India. The one way to slow or reverse this regression will be through innovation.
This is not a new discussion, but it has taken on new relevance as economic recovery in the
USA has been slower than expected.
Innovation is relevant and innovation is everywhere. Recently, the Wall Street Journal
(Kwoh, 2012) reported that the word innovation had been used over 33,000 times (in
2011) in US quarterly and annual reports, was the subject title of nearly 300 books
published in the last three months of 2011 and that almost one-third of US business schools
used the word in their mission statement. So, there are a lot of things we already know about
innovation but simply put are we getting it, or has innovation become a ubiquitous term?
Whether the USA is an innovation nation is still an argument. Those who agree can cite a
recent edition of Fast Company (2012) that placed five US companies at the top of the
worlds 50 most innovative companies (Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon and Square).
On the other side, those who equate innovation with productivity will draw attention to the
continually slipping percentage of the USA GDP on the world stage, where losses almost
mirror the gains made in Asia Pacific, India and the ever-emerging Latin America. Recently,
for example, Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal was quoted as saying that innovation in
America is somewhere between dire straits and dead (The Economist, 2013). Our own
research shows that this is not the case. Companies that put innovation at the top of the
corporate agenda generate superior shareholder returns down the road. We know that
innovation health is correlated with performance, and this is evidenced in other studies
highlighting competitive results. For example, a Harris Interactive study (2010) indicated
that a vast majority of executives say enterprise innovation is extremely or very important for
driving business growth and profitability. It is also a factor in attracting and keeping talent
and brand prestige. A recent Top 1,000 study (Jaruzelski and Dehoff, 2010) reported that

DOI 10.1108/JBS-12-2013-0115 VOL. 36 NO. 1 2015, pp. 3-13, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 0275-6668 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY PAGE 3
 A vast majority of executives say enterprise innovation is
extremely or very important for driving business growth and
protability.

companies that focus on a set of innovation capabilities most consistent with their
innovation strategy and tightly aligned with their overall corporate strategy had higher profit
margins than their competitors, by up to 22 per cent. This is supported by an earlier study
by Little (2005), where it was concluded that innovation excellence can boost earnings
before interest and tax by 4 per cent and that top innovative companies have 2.5 times
higher sales of new products and get more than ten times higher returns from their
innovation investments.
What we do know for certain is that for companies and countries to remain competitive and
to grow, they must innovate. Executives get this, and as a result, innovation is an emerging
practice in organizations. In a recent survey done by The Boston Consulting Group (2012),
metrics including the relative priority of innovation and innovation spending are at their
highest level in more than five years, suggesting that leaders in the USA are courting
innovation as a source of competitive advantage. The top five list from the Boston
Consulting Group (BCG) differs slightly from the Fast Company list of Most Innovative
Companies. In BCGs survey, Amazon and Square are out, and Samsung and Microsoft
are in. BCGs rankings are based on shareholder returns, revenue growth and margin
growth over a three-year rolling period. The 2012 top innovators earned a 6.3 per cent total
shareholder return premium (stock price appreciation and dividends) over three years.
Companies that have been on the list since 2004 delivered a 4 per cent premium over 10
years. Essentially, BCG is using performance as an output surrogate measure for
innovation, adding further evidence that innovation and performance are correlated.
Even governments have seen the way, as President Obama, in his, 2013 State of the Union
Address, introduced the establishment of 56 regional clusters to support innovation in
organizations, recognizing that innovation at the organization level is the key factor in
creating differential value and spurring GDP growth. These clusters are intended to provide
an infrastructure for advanced collaborations amongst sectors, support for new processes
and systems to advance innovation, innovation skills development and matching funding to
support innovation initiatives. This is consistent with the business needs in the USA, many
of which are at the front-end of an innovation system; for example, innovation goals are
being discussed, cultures re-jigged and for the first time efforts are being made to tie
performance metrics to innovation outcomes.

The many faces of innovation

The DNA of innovation is grounded in almost every functional discipline of management
and includes leadership, processes to support innovation activity, knowledge management
and execution. Frameworks and matrices abound outlining the spectrum of innovation.
They range from one dimensional for a new product development focus to
multi-dimensional and disruptive, forces of which attempt to set existing industries back to
zero or create such value that entire new industries are spawned.
Innovation leads to the introduction of new products or services and the creation of new
value altogether. Organizations need innovation to meet ever-changing demands of
stakeholders or to out-compete rivals in an industry. Innovation has many faces and ranges
from a random event to new industries. Companies that get it prove to be industry
leaders. Not only do they create new value on a consistent basis, they often redefine the
competitive landscape. Examples include Wal-Marts innovation platform around

PAGE 4 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY VOL. 36 NO. 1 2015

procurement and supply chain management (Johnson and Mark, 2013), which has
transformed retail; Smith and Wessons product portfolio (Austin, 2013), which makes the
BCG matrix look like kids play; and Whirlpools 10-year quest toward enterprise innovation
(Norena, 2013), where essentially they have proven the axiom that innovation culture eats
strategy. In Whirlpools example, their market capitalization has tripled in the past year
alone. This level of innovation orientation also sets the stage for migration into the radical
innovation quadrant, which sets industries back to zero. Examples of radical innovation
include Apple, Dyson, Ebay, Google, 3M, Netflix, Square and GE. Arguably, these
organizations are industry leaders and innovators that drive creative destruction. In these
industries, competitors at minimum have to be great imitators (Figure 1).
Finally, the potential for disruptive innovation exists. These are innovations that occur every
10- 20 years that create entirely new industries: the Wright brothers and aviation, Henry
Ford and the automotive industry, the invention of the pacemaker by Dr Earl Bakken of
Medtronics, Walt Disney, Facebook and the social networking era and Richard Bransons
Virgin Galactic and its quest to develop commercialized space travel. These are rare, and
almost always result in the nucleus of an entirely new industry. In time, as the innovation
becomes difficult to protect, the industry standardizes and the nucleus organization
becomes one of the many competitors, as is the case with Medtronics and Facebook.
The majority of organizations we surveyed using the Innovation Culture Measurement
metric since 2006 generally present with an innovation health index (IHI) score of less
than 70 per cent. The average of over 2,000 assessments done to date is 66 per cent. This
means that innovation in many organizations happens in a random, non-systematic
manner. More by chance and not design, innovation ideas filter up to the point where they
are implemented. Such innovations create short-term advantages. A good example of this
is a small financial institution in Canada that developed the first automated teller machine
in the 1970s, an idea generated by the necessity to have bank service in remote areas of
a vast and sparsely populated province (Western Development Museum, 2013). It led to a
short-term advantage, but was easily copied. ATMs are now generic and can be found
everywhere, yet this organization has not produced another significant innovation. For
these organizations, it is not as much about how many ideas get through, as it is the ones
that are missed due to a lack of an innovation engine.

Defining and measuring innovation health in the USA

Innovation has been widely defined, but not always fully understood. The definition ranges
from being uni-dimensional (a measure of R&D expenditures or the number of new patents
registered) through to a transformational, enterprise level approach. We define innovation
as the creation, development and implementation of a new product, service, process or

Figure 1 The many faces of innovation

VOL. 36 NO. 1 2015 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY PAGE 5

 business model, with the aim of improving efficiency, effectiveness or competitive
advantage. In this sense, innovation may create new or improved customer value, more
competitive business models and contribute to more nimble organization designs. At the
organizational level, the output of enterprise level innovation is ultimately reflected through
how much value is created. At the country level, growth in GDP beyond that of organic
growth is predicated on the aggregated value created by organizations (Figure 2).

Findings of the F1000 survey

One of the leading questions this survey set out to answer is the current measure of
innovation orientation amongst Americas largest organizations. Our findings suggest that
US business is just beginning to catch the wave of innovation. The aggregate profile is
presented in Figure 3, followed by the top-level findings:

Figure 2 The InnovationOne metric

Figure 3 F1000 aggregate profile (n 1,127)

F1000 InnovaonOne Profile Score - 68%

Innovaon Propensity
100
InnovaonOne Score 90 Employee Connecvity
80
70
69 70 70
Alignment 60 Strategic Architecture
50
60 40 59
30
New Venture 20 Employee Skills and
Management 62 10 73 Creavity
0

Employee 63
81 Organizaonal Learning
Empowerment
67
72
Business Environment 68 Technological and
Enactment 74 Financial Support
Knowledge
Knowledge Generaon
Disseminaon

PAGE 6 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY VOL. 36 NO. 1 2015

 Average at Best [. . .] There are a number of innovation benchmark scores available
(The Global Innovation Index, 2013; Innovation Union Scoreboard, 2013), and no matter
what source is considered, the USA is not a leading nation when it comes to innovation.
The average innovation scores (IHI) amongst the US F1000 is 68 per cent. Although this
score is respectable, it indicates that US F1000 organizations are only marginally
innovative, and that there is room for improvement. A score of 68 per cent compares
favorably with scores in the UK and Canada, but lags Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland
Germany and Finland.
Incremental and Random [. . .] It is evident that innovation is an emerging functional
area within most organizations, and is becoming an increasingly important factor to
support sustainable value creation activities. However, the score suggests that most
innovation that happens is random.
Where is the Strategy?[. . .] Although many organizations have the intention to be
innovative, the majority of companies surveyed do not have an explicit strategy.
An Executive/Employee Perception Gap [. . .] There are gaps in the perception of innovation
culture within organizations between the C-suite and management/employees, suggesting
that senior management may believe the organization to be more innovative than rank and
file employees believe.
Governance is Missing [. . .] Pretty much across the board, governance for the formal
management of innovation is largely underdeveloped. This involves systems and tools to
support innovation, and is also evident in management control and performance
management systems, where performance metrics for innovation are either lacking or
non-existent, and compensation and incentive structures are misaligned.
Do not Blame the Employees [. . .] Creativity and empowerment levels of employees are not
barriers to innovation in organizations. These drivers scored amongst the highest of the 12
measured. Alternatively, the leadership for innovation and organizational design and
execution frameworks are impairing progress of innovation systems in organizations. This is
where the largest gaps were found.
Creating Knowledge is not Enough [. . .] There was a noticeable gap between
organizational ability to generate knowledge and ability to disseminate knowledge. This gap
is inhibiting employees and managers ability to leverage knowledge into value-enhancing
innovations in products, processes and business models.
Executives are Optimistic [. . .] Notwithstanding recent global economic and political
turmoil, executives are generally optimistic about the future. Eighty per cent of executives
responded that they were somewhat or very optimistic about their organizations future over
the next two years.
Companies that Fail to Innovate will Struggle Even More [. . .] Amongst F1000 companies
alone, differences in the IHIs range up to 7 per cent between those that are in the top 10 per
cent of their industry and all others. When compared to the bottom 50 per cent of
performers, the gap is even wider, up to 22 per cent. Simply put, companies that fail to
innovate on a consistent basis will be quickly abandoned by the market and eventually will
not survive.
Employees Have a Narrow View of Innovation [. . .] Respondents were asked to interpret
their understanding of how they defined innovation. When given options to define

Innovation in many organizations happens in a random,

non-systematic manner.

VOL. 36 NO. 1 2015 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY PAGE 7

 Innovation is an emerging functional area within most
organizations, and is becoming an increasingly important
factor to support sustainable value creation activities.

innovation, less than 50 per cent of respondents identified innovation as enterprise-oriented

and multi-dimensional. The majority of respondents defined innovation as something very
specific or uni-dimensional. This is not surprising as our experience in innovation training is
that many people do not think of innovation in the broader sense and this often acts as an
impediment to what is possible, and as a result, moving the innovation agenda forward on
an enterprise level proves to be difficult.

Managerial considerations (operational)

The model used in this research is based on peer-reviewed published research outlining 12
drivers across the four tenets supporting innovation in organizations. Each one of these four
tenets is further considered below.

Leadership
Organizations should establish a clear innovation strategy and governance process, and
the leadership for innovation must start in the C-suite.
The essence of innovation leadership is to establish organizational readiness and
communicate a commitment to becoming innovative. The results illustrate that readiness
and commitment have traction in US F1000 organizations. This is seen through the 70 per
cent score of innovation propensity and employee connectivity. This indicates that the
heightened awareness of innovation in US organizations is starting to resonate with
employees. Employees are beginning to believe that organizations are genuine in their
desire to be innovative and that it is not just lip service. They also sense that they will factor
in as an integral part of the innovation agenda.
The significant gap identified is the inability to create an environment to promote and
encourage innovation (at 59 per cent). Although an organization may have identified
innovation as a strategic priority and communicated this intent to employees, the planning
processes, goals and objectives largely remain unchanged. In fact, traditional strategic
planning and governance processes act as a barrier working against any organizational
efforts to promote and communicate innovation.
A major barrier to innovation is the absence of a well-articulated innovation strategy that is
communicated to employees. Innovative organizations that excel have a clear innovation
strategy; they have created and communicated innovation goals and objectives and have
aligned these with their strategic agenda. This alignment has advanced the innovation
agenda by developing planning processes and tools that fast-track innovation projects and
plans so that decision-making does not become bogged down.
The survey illustrated that leaders of organizations are only beginning to discuss innovation
as a key strategy. Leaders are even less successful at entrenching innovation into their
strategic plans and developing innovation goals and objectives that can be used to
communicate to their employees in a meaningful way.
The second major barrier revolves around inadequate process and governance to move
ideas forward. The survey results indicate that employees were not the issue. The highest
scoring innovation drivers are related to employee skills, creativity and empowerment. This
means that organizations have the capability and willingness, through their employees, to

PAGE 8 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY VOL. 36 NO. 1 2015

 generate new ideas. However, organizations struggle with implementing a process that
turns an idea into reality. This issue becomes systemic as employees culturally will be less
inclined to suggest new ideas if the challenges of moving the idea forward are significant
or consistently repressed.

Resources
Organizations need to re-consider how employees learn, and the types of management/
professional development they provide.
The factors that support innovation are related to employee skills and creativity,
organizational learning and the technical/financial support. F1000 executives believe that
the most significant gap relates to organizational learning. The issue with resources is not
as much about the skills and creativity of employees, which scored 73 per cent, or the
organizations technical and financial support, at 72 per cent. Rather, the most significant
gap relates to the organizations ability to harness innovation learning, scoring 63 per cent.
Many organizations spend considerable resources on training employees and on support
for employee skill development. However, the survey indicates that many employees are
not quite sure what innovation means or how it applies to their position, suggesting that this
investment has not translated into organization-wide learning to promote innovation
specifically.
Organizational learning has tended to be technical in nature and focused on existing
processes, projects, products and services. This can act as a barrier to innovation.
Although employees may be developing greater skill and creativity through financial and
technical investments in resources, innovation agendas remain random events if the focus
is continually on pop management topics and status quo training. Organizations that
score higher in organizational learning leverage their existing training programs to promote
systematic innovation agendas.

Knowledge management
Communication in organizations at best is difficult, and further attention should be directed
at ways to strategically disseminate information about customers, competitors and the
value chain in general.
Innovation ideas are driven by knowledge related to the industry, value chain, competitors
and clients. It includes employee sensitivity to the environment, and use of this enhanced
peripheral vision to identify innovation opportunities. Many of these will be suggested by
customers and suppliers and will ultimately translate into strategic portfolio options,
including horizontal and vertical integration, and boundary-spanning activities. Employees
will also provide an internal focus on processes and business models that is, better ways
of doing things. US organizations are doing a better job at generating knowledge (74 per
cent) than they are with disseminating knowledge (68 per cent) internally and using the
knowledge to impact their business environment (67 per cent) (Dobni and Nelson, 2013).
US organizations have invested in an abundance of systems to enhance their knowledge
(i.e. customer relationship management, business data intelligence and supply chain
management), but our survey shows that from an innovation perspective, a gap still
remains in leveraging knowledge so that employees can more effectively interact with their

Eighty per cent of executives responded that they were

somewhat or very optimistic about their organizations
future over the next two years.

VOL. 36 NO. 1 2015 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY PAGE 9

 Organizations that score higher in organizational learning
leverage their existing training programs to promote
systematic innovation agendas.

environment. For example, organizations are better at collecting information about their
customers, but less successful at communicating the information in a meaningful manner.
Additionally, the ability to convert customer information into transient value is less
successful. It is also apparent that employees generally lack sufficient knowledge outside
what we would consider their relevant boundaries to generate value added or disruptive
innovations.

Execution
Performance management systems need to be aligned with the innovation goals of the
organization.
The most significant innovation gap was found in the execution dimension. To effectively
innovate, employees need to be empowered to embrace new ideas and be comfortable
with the associated risk of implementation. Survey results clearly indicated that it was not
the employees who were the barrier to execution, scoring the employee empowerment
driver at 81 per cent. The perception was that employees were capable and willing, but the
barriers to execution were more operationally and strategically oriented. Executives felt that
the processes and institutions organizations created internally impeded the employees
ability to manage new ideas and ventures (at 62 per cent).
Organizations struggle with creating a performance management system that rewards
employee innovation. Respondents felt that systems were not aligned in a manner that
enabled employees to embrace innovation. Qualitative responses described organizations
that had a multitude of processes, goals, innovation priorities and performance
management programs loosely oriented towards innovation. Understanding how these
drivers fit and align is a complicated puzzle impeding the innovation culture. This barrier is
even more pronounced because of the lack of innovation strategy, goals and objectives
within the organization. The end result is that performance management systems end up
rewarding the status quo instead of innovation.

Managerial considerations (strategic)

Closing the perception gap
The data suggest that there is a gap between the most senior levels of management and
mid-level management in the perception of innovation in the organization. Top management
often perceives the organization to be more innovative than the rank and file in some cases
this gap exceeds 10 per cent. Perception is reality, and the initial challenge for leadership
will be to ensure commitment to continue to embed innovation culture, all the while
managing the enterprise as a going concern.

Strategically focus on drivers inhibiting innovation

There are also gaps amongst the drivers of innovation, and when considering the pursuit
of innovation in a holistic sense, some areas for example, knowledge management and
execution will need more attention than others. This balance includes achieving
short-term goals, meeting and advancing stakeholder expectations, balancing innovation
strategy with other goals and objectives, providing the time, space and resources for
innovation and defecting from processes and practices based on status quo foundations.

PAGE 10 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY VOL. 36 NO. 1 2015

This cultural transition will prove to be the biggest leadership challenge over the next 10
years.

Set a goal for 70 per cent and beyond

There is no optimal level of innovation health as every organization is unique, and every
division within organizations possesses specific mandates that may require exclusive
approaches. What we do know is that every organization, whether it is a high-tech blue chip
or a non-profit organization, can benefit from a baseline level of innovation that is
systematic and planned, and that most organizations are capable of moving from a random
state to a more systematically managed innovation. Our observations suggest the IHI
threshold score is 70 per cent, a score where employees generally begin to think and act
differently. This is also the tipping point where the culture begins to value enterprise
innovation, and where organizations experience objective correlative results on top-line
and bottom-line performance. As well, the level of innovation orientation is related to growth
and performance over time, and this outcome is attributable to innovation that fosters
emergent strategy growth and transient value creation. This would include value-added
customer-focused strategies, a pipeline of new products and services and more effective
and focused systems, processes and business models.
The innovation gain from advancing an organizations innovation platform will be the
difference between success and failure in competitive industries going forward. An
innovation orientation will be important to enable emergent strategy focus, execution and
agility in an environment of continuous change. As traditional competitive strategy
portfolios become hygiene, they will no longer suffice in the pursuit of sustainable growth
in high competition and uncertainty. Strategy without innovation is no longer an option.

Behind the numbers

We have described what a 68 per cent IHI is, but an even more interesting story is told
behind the numbers. The standardized demographic profile of the F1000 is wide, and given
the large number of respondents to this survey, we were able to drill down and consider
differences in innovation orientation based on industry, business performance and other
top-line factors where we had sufficient response to support the analysis. Overall, F1000
rank and overall revenue do not play a role in the score. These markers resulted in small
variances. There was a considerable variation by relative industry performance, position
held in the organization, level of optimism and by industry. The IHI varied by up to 5 per
cent by industry and position held, and by over 20 per cent when considering performance
and optimism. Those in the top 10 per cent of their industry (financial performance)
averaged 73 per cent, while those in the bottom 50 per cent based on performance
averaged a score of 51 per cent. These differences are stark but not surprising given the
evidence we have about the relationship between innovation and performance.
Level of optimism also weighed in with a vast difference between those who are pessimistic
(55 per cent) versus those who are either optimistic (66 per cent) or very optimistic (76 per
cent). We are not surprised by this given that innovation is essentially a measure of how
employees think and act, and as a result we would expect strong correlations here. In
respect to IHI by industry, technology services rates highest at 72 per cent, followed by
insurance and manufacturing. Business services, banking, healthcare and real estate
scored near or below the mean (Figure 4).

Final thoughts
Innovation will be key to global competitiveness and advancing the agenda will be a first
step in addressing the crisis drift in major economies. Our findings would suggest that US
business is just beginning to catch the wave of innovation. Currently, the scores suggest
that US firms could greatly prosper from innovation leadership aimed at closing the gaps
identified. By adopting systematic and planned approaches to innovation, combined with

VOL. 36 NO. 1 2015 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY PAGE 11

 Figure 4 The story behind the numbers

Behind the Numbers

100
90
by posion by performance by outlook
80
70 76
71 73
60 68 66 66

50 55
51
40
30
20
10
0
CEO/VP Dir/Mgr Top 10% 11-50% Boom Very Opmisc Pessimisc
50% Opmisc

innovation leadership at the executive ranks, we feel that the IHI score could be moved by
5 per cent in the short term, and even higher in the long term. This would firmly place US
organizations on a path to regain a dominant innovation position worldwide.
The first 5 per cent is easy, and what American businesses can benefit the most from at this
point are investments in leadership. It is apparent that employees are both empowered and
creative, and the economy is not an obstacle. But there are significant hurdles that need to
be cleared or managed. It is a challenging environment, and the key question becomes
one of how C-suite executives should focus their limited time and resources on a handful
of key drivers that support innovation. Chief executive officers that get it have already have
communicated a strong case for change, secured senior leadership commitment and have
thought strategically about the tradeoffs that will see innovation pursued on a holistic,
integrated approach. Moving beyond the 5 per cent will take an even bolder leadership.
Only a handful of respondents commented that the economy was hindering their innovation
efforts, and 80 per cent indicated that they were either somewhat or very optimistic about
Keywords: their organizations future over the next two years. Many of the innovation leaders have
Strategy, emerged from recession economies. Disney, CNN, MTV, FedEx, Gillette, Microsoft and
Innovation, Adobe are examples of such companies founded during recessionary periods. Given
Culture, historical precedent and the emerging opportunities in verticals such as mobility, social
Alignment, media, renewable energy, health care, big data and ongoing consumer consumption, it
Fortune 1000, would be a mistake to conclude that the entrepreneurial and innovative traits of the US
Performance management economy will cease to create some of the most successful companies of the future.

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About the authors

C. Brooke Dobni is a Professor of Strategy at the Edwards School of Business and the founder
of Strategian, an applied research firm based in Canada. Strategian clients include EDS,
Hitachi, PotashCorp, Cameco, the University of Cincinnati and KnowledgeWorks. C. Brooke
Dobni is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: dobni@edwards.usask.ca
Mark Klassen has had over 10 years of worldwide consulting experience with Deloitte
Consulting. He is an Associate at Strategian and an Assistant Professor of Accounting at
the Edwards School of Business.

W. Thomas Nelson is the President of Lodestar, a business-to-business consulting firm

based in Princeton, New Jersey. Lodestar integrates research, innovation and information
management, enabling clients to build more effective organizations. Lodestar clients
include GE Healthcare, Pfizer, America Express, J.P. Morgan and Oracle.

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