The Northwest Passage (Epilogue)

Herman B. Leonard; Peter  Brannen

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Supplement | HBS Case Collection | October 2008 (Revised February 2014)

The Northwest Passage (Epilogue)

by Herman B. Leonard and Peter Brannen

Abstract

Supplement to 309067

Keywords: Canada;

Language: English

Format: Print

4 pages

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Citation:

Leonard, Herman B., and Peter Brannen. "The Northwest Passage (Epilogue)." Harvard Business School Supplement 309-068, October 2008. (Revised February 2014.)

About the Author

Herman B. Leonard

George F. Baker, Jr. Professor of Public Management, Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration

General Management

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Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

Novel Risks

Robert S. Kaplan, Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard and Anette Mikes

All organizations practice some form of risk management to identify and assess routine risks in their operations, supply chains, strategy, and external environment. These risk management policies, however, fail in the presence of novelty. Novel risks arise from unforeseen events, from complex combinations of apparently routine events, and from apparently familiar events occurring at unprecedented scale and speed. Mobilizing routine risk management to novel events will be ineffective, and, more seriously, delude management into thinking that risks have been mitigated when they may already have escalated to serious consequences. Based on best practices from the private and public sector, the paper describes structures and processes to identify and respond to novel risks. A critical incident management team makes assessments and develops options in the event’s uncertain and volatile environment. The team’s decision-making process has to be rapid, improvisational, iterative, and humble since not every action taken will work as intended.

Keywords: Risk Management; Policy; Failure; Organizational Change and Adaptation;

Citation:
Kaplan, Robert S., Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard, and Anette Mikes. "Novel Risks." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-094, March 2020. (Revised May 2020.) View Details

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Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2019

SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command (Abridged)

Herman Leonard, Mitch Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik and Kerry Herman

Citation:
Leonard, Herman, Mitch Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik, and Kerry Herman. "SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command (Abridged)." Harvard Business School Case 820-047, September 2019. View Details

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Case | HBS Case Collection | July 2018 (Revised December 2018)

SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command

Herman Leonard, Mitchell Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik and Kerry Herman

James “Hondo” Geurts, the Acquisition Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command, was in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017 to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. The questions had a common theme: how would Geurts’s experience running an innovative procurement effort for U.S. Special Forces units enable him to change a much larger—and much more rigid—organization like the U.S. Navy? In one of the most secretive parts of the U.S. military, Geurts founded an open platform called SOFWERX to speed the rate of ideas to Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces, and the like. His team even sourced the idea for a hoverboard from a YouTube video. But how should things like SOFWERX and protypes like the EZ-Fly find a place within the Navy writ large?

Keywords: James Geurts; innovation; public entrepreneurship; open innovation; crowdsourcing; contests; prototyping; SOFWERX; Special Operations; SOCOM; govtech; procurement; FAR; EZ-Fly; Navy; Department of Defense; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Acquisition; Public Administration Industry; United States;

Citation:
Leonard, Herman, Mitchell Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik, and Kerry Herman. "SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command." Harvard Business School Case 819-004, July 2018. (Revised December 2018.) View Details

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The Northwest Passage (Epilogue)

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