ELE 3763 Innovation Strategy and Technological Change
ELE 3763 Innovation Strategy and Technological Change
How do companies like Apple and Google manage to continually come up with new products and services? How did a company like Nokia go from being the world's number one vendor of smartphones to the tenth largest within four years? Why is the development and adoption of (hybrid) electric vehicles so slow? How did a company like Kodak end up having to declare bankruptcy while owning highly valuable technology assets and being a pioneer in the digital camera market? What is at the basis of the Apple-Samsung legal battle?
This course explores technological change and innovation from an economic/business standpoint. Technological change affects individual firms or entrepreneurs, industries and economies. We study how firms and entrepreneurs react and contribute to technological change; how they make decisions to both come up with innovations and appropriate their benefits; how they finance innovation.
A variety of companies examples will illustrate strategic approaches to innovation. We will look at both established firms and new firms.
After completed course students shall have:
- Established an understanding of how technological change impacts on innovation.
- Learned about technological diffusion and adoption.
- Gained understanding of organisation structures for innovation.
- Developed the knowledge about the key elements of innovation and technology strategy.
After completed course students should be able to:
- Explain how new innovation/technology reach the market and evolve in the industry.
- Account for how technology affect existing firms and entrepreneurial activities.
- Analyze and implement a firm's innovation strategy.
- Students should be able to reflect on the value of innovation and the appropriation of its benefits, especially intellectual property rights and other mechanisms to derive and appropriate value from innovation.
PART I: UNDERSTANDING TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
- Introduction. What is innovation and technological change. Definitions and basic concepts. Broad discussion and statistics on effects of technological change on productivity and growth.
- Technology evolution. How does a new innovation/technology reach the market and evolve in the industry? How does it affect existing firms and entrepreneurial activity.
- Technology diffusion and adoption. What factors influence an innovation/technology diffusion. Why forecasting demand is important and how can we do it.
- Measuring Innovation. How can we measure innovation performance?
PART II: INNOVATION STRATEGY
- The value of innovation and the appropriation of its benefits. Intellectual property rights and other mechanisms to derive and appropriate value from innovation
- Sources of Innovation. Innovation Process.
- Organization structure for innovation. How can a firm facilitate innovation?
- Selection of innovation projects and financing of innovation.
The course is structured as a combination of professor’s (or a guest’s) lecturing and interactive class discussion. Class discussion will be based on specific companies or innovations’ cases/examples used in class to emphasize specific topics. The examples will be documented through short case-readings and will refer to both ‘historical’, benchmark cases and more recent cases found in the news. Each topic will be supported by one or more of such cases-examples. While most of the times the lecturer will propose the examples/cases for discussion, as part of the learning activities the students will be also asked on occasions to proactively propose short cases/news based readings as specific examples of the topics covered in class.
For electives re-sit is normally offered at the next scheduled course. If an elective is discontinued or is not initiated in the semester it is offered, re-sit will be offered in the electives ordinary semester.
Higher Education Entrance Qualification
Disclaimer
Deviations in teaching and exams may occur if external conditions or unforeseen events call for this.
No specific prerequisites required.
| Assessments |
|---|
Exam category: School Exam Form of assessment: Structured Test Exam/hand-in semester: First Semester Weight: 100 Grouping: Individual Support materials:
Duration: 1 Hour(s) Comment: . Exam code: ELE37631 Grading scale: ECTS Resit: Examination when next scheduled course |
| Activity | Duration | Comment |
|---|---|---|
Teaching | 36 Hour(s) | |
Prepare for teaching | 36 Hour(s) | |
Student's own work with learning resources | 126 Hour(s) | |
Examination | 2 Hour(s) | Exam is 1 hour, up to an extra hour is expected for student self-familiarizing with exam tools or location. |
A course of 1 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of 26-30 hours. Therefore a course of 7,5 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of at least 200 hours.