Innovation
Compulsory module
15 credits
Click on the thumbnail image to view a diagramatic view of the innovation module.
So what is innovation and can it be taught? On this module we will challenge you to think in new ways. We will not teach you to design a new mousetrap, but we will surprise you. Innovation involves boundary crossing, with inspiration coming from the past, from science, from suppliers, from other product, from customers. It combines imagination and creativity, with an understanding of both users and competitors. Above all it involves high risk, and diffusion is more a sociological process than a technological one.
Successful innovation involves the dynamic dance of two questions: what is needed and what is possible? What is needed means understanding customer needs and ensuring product design accommodates and responds to them. What is possible depends on resources, technology, social and economic conditions, behaviour of competitors and networks of connections. The relationship between the two is constantly changing. Students have the opportunity to explore the way in which many innovations involve crossing boundaries; why some innovations fail; what forces lead to diffusion of innovation; how entrepreneurs innovate to survive and the extent to which innovation is a networking activity. Innovation is differentiated from invention and considered from the perspective of the economy, the individual firm and the individual consumer and placed in a long term framework.
The module adopts innovative teaching and learning methods, designed to encourage creative thought. A blended learning approach is used based on a Sakai collaborative software platform, the use of which was pioneered at Lancaster University Management School, by EBIN504. All students have access to module space for all resources and a forum. Group work on this module is facilitated by the use of a Wiki (the collaborative software behind Wikipedia), where you work collaboratively in small groups to analyse current innovations.
Each student also keeps an online academic learning log, which is private to the individual and to tutors. This gives the opportunity to develop a personal journey through the module, building understanding and crossing academic boundaries with tutor support. This is combined with highly interactive face-to-face workshops, to make the learning experience truly active. This module on innovation is delivered by a businessman and an academic and so genuinely confronts theory with practice.
Syllabus
1 What is innovation?
2 Diffusion
3 Models of innovation
4 Innovation as evolution
5 Process innovation: craft to mass production
6 Process innovation: mass to lean production
7 Collaborative innovation
8 ICT and the information age
9 Open innovation and mass collaboration
Select bibliography:
John Bessant and Joe Tidd: Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Wiley)
Joe Tidd, John Bessant and Keith Pavitt, Managing Innovation: Integrating Technological, Market and Organizational Change (2005, 3rd edition)
Utterback, James M. (1996) Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Business School Press)
