Speaker

David OWENS

Professor - Vanderbilt’s Graduate School of Management

David A. Owens is Professor of the Practice of Management and Innovation at Vanderbilt’s Graduate School of Management.  He holds a secondary appointment in Engineering Management and is an affiliated faculty member at the Peabody College of Education.  He earned his PhD in Management Science and Engineering in a joint program of the Graduate School of Business and the School of Engineering at Stanford University. He also holds an M.S. in engineering product design and a B.S. and P.E. in electrical engineering.

Owens studies the process of innovation in diverse areas such as the acceptance of software diagnostic tools by medical clinicians and the process of innovation in product and service companies.  In the Spatial Learning and Mobility lab, Owens conducts research on learning in non-school settings. Current projects include the design of a makerspace for patients in a children’s hospital, and developing a methodology for the analysis of engagement in groups during museum visits.

He has published in numerous journals and has given more than 250 conference and invited talks internationally.  His work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the London Guardian, as well as on NPR’s Marketplace among others.

Owens also served as CEO of Griffin Technology, the third largest firm in the iPhone accessory market, and has consulted on strategic innovation for NASA, IDEO, The Smithsonian, Nissan, Mars, Tetra Pak, Cisco, LEGO, Wrigley, and numerous other organizations.  His book Creative People Must Be Stopped! Six Ways We Stop Innovation (Without Even Trying) was published in 2012, and over 100,000 students have taken his MOOC based on the book.

Publications (5 max.):

• Owens, David A. (2013), Leading Strategic Innovation In Organizations. Free 8-week graduate level Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) offered through the Coursera global platform.  www.coursera.org/course/innovation
• Owens, David A. (2012), Creative People Must Be Stopped: Six Ways We Stop Innovation (Without Even Trying). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Fraser, S., Harder, E. Mancl, D. Opdyke, Owens, D.A., Riehle, D., and Rising, L. (2008), “Escaped From the Lab: Innovation Practices in Large Organizations.” Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object- Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications Pg. 787-790. ACM NY, NY.
• Phillips, D., and Owens, D. A., (2005), “Incumbents, Innovation, and Competence: The Emergence of Recorded Jazz, 1920 – 1929.” Poetics Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media, and the Arts, Vol. 32. No. 3. London, UK: Elsevier BV.