COL Shoop Plenary Presentation on Innovation

COL Shoop, Professor and Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, delivered the Plenary Presentation entitled “Innovation as an Ecosystem” at the 2017 Uruguay Conference (URUCON) in Montevideo, Uruguay. In this plenary presentation, he first described his course Disruptive Innovations, and how the cadets in the course study both the technical dimension of innovation as well as the human dimension, which drives acceptance or rejection of the technological innovation based on cultural, social, and religious aspects of the market. Beyond the technological and human dimensions, he discussed the importance of developing both the organizational structure and organizational culture dimensions that encourage and support innovation. This innovation ecosystem can be found at the micro-level of a corporation’s department or division, the regional-level of a geographic region like Silicon Valley and at the macro-level of a nation-state like Israel, Japan or Singapore.