GRA 3165 The Crowd, The Cloud, and Sustainable Innovation
GRA 3165 The Crowd, The Cloud, and Sustainable Innovation
Unbridled advances in technology and connectedness have transformed the relationship between companies, customers, and competitors. With this transformation, the lines between business relationships, social connections, and competitive advantage are increasingly connected to one another. Thus, companies across all industries and size classes—from established industry giants to high-growth companies in new technology areas—require the skills and knowledge to strategically harness the power of “the crowd and the cloud”. This course addresses the distinct challenges and opportunities posed by the confluence of digital community, powerful and expanding data gathering and analytics, and the intertwining of technological change and business models.
This course is relevant for students seeking to expand their skills in harnessing insights from real-time change for the development of powerful and adaptable decision-making and innovation. This class will draw upon current topics including: the crowdsourcing of innovation in established firms and new entrants; the use of technological connectedness and social media strategies in developing innovative user communities; the challenges and opportunities of co-creation; and the emergence of crowd-based funding as a financial tool for launching new projects. The course relies on case analysis and class discussions focused on applying analytical skills to challenges and opportunities in current contexts.
- Students will learn to identify the strategic value of crowd-based models of innovation and product development.
- Students will become knowledgeable about the widespread impact of cloud-computing and big data
- Students will learn to understand the importance of data analytics in strategy formulation
- Students should be able to understand when crowd-based strategies are most valuable and consider various alternative means of utilizing the crowd
- Students should be able to recognize the value of user-based ideas and apply this knowledge to developing business plans
- Students should understand terms sheets
- Students should be able to develop a business plan for a new venture or corporate venture that leverages the crowd or the cloud
- Students should be able to use digital tools to communicate with potential investors and corporate innovators
- Students will be able to apply analytic tools that can be applied to reaching corporate and social sustainability goals
- Students should be able to use their knowledge and skills in unique situations to identify the opportunities offered by the growing importance of crowd and cloud based strategies, but also understand the tradeoffs involved amongst these choices
- Students should be able to draw on insights from theory and their own application to reflect on appropriateness of different digital strategies
- Students should be able to draw on insights from theory and their own application to develop a deeper understanding of challenges and opportunities relating to sustainability
The course content includes:
- Crowd, Cloud, and Strategy: the crowd in strategy and innovation, big data and strategy, how do current innovation models adapt to digital trends
- Leveraging the Cloud: Killer apps, “software is eating the world” and strategy
- Strategic crowdsourcing, innovation, and entrepreneurship: ideas from the crowd, user innovation and user entrepreneurship, open innovation models
- Strategically leveraging the cloud in analytics: big data, cloud computing, data analytics
- Crowdfunding and innovation: debt and product-based crowdfunding, equity crowdfunding
- Digital trends and multisided platforms: platform-based models, invention platforms,
- Digital universe, power of big data: impact across industries, e.g., digital health, fintech, renewables
- Sustainable innovation: using open innovation for sustainability, tackling big challenges, invention platforms
The course is premised upon your thorough preparation and participation in every session. The format is highly interactive and relies on vigorous class discussion of readings, critical case analysis, and team exercises.
The digital engagement platform Yellowdig will be used as a tool for class participation.
Please note that it is the student’s own responsibility to obtain any information provided in class.
This is a course with continuous assessment (several exam components) and one final exam code. Each exam component is graded by using points on a scale from 0-100. The components will be weighted together according to the information in the course description in order to calculate the final letter grade for the examination code (course). Students who fail to participate in one/some/all exam elements will get a lower grade or may fail the course. You will find detailed information about the point system and the cut off points with reference to the letter grades when the course starts.
At resit, all exam components must, as a main rule, be retaken during next scheduled course.
| Assessments |
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Exam category: Activity Form of assessment: Class participation Weight: 30 Grouping: Individual Duration: 1 Semester(s) Comment: Preparation and participation Exam code: GRA31651 Grading scale: Point scale leading to ECTS letter grade Resit: All components must, as a main rule, be retaken during next scheduled course |
Exam category: Submission Form of assessment: Blog production Weight: 20 Grouping: Individual Duration: 1 Semester(s) Comment: Weekly blogs and comments Exam code: GRA31651 Grading scale: Point scale leading to ECTS letter grade Resit: All components must, as a main rule, be retaken during next scheduled course |
Exam category: Submission Form of assessment: Written submission Weight: 50 Grouping: Group (4 - 6) Duration: 1 Semester(s) Comment: Team Project Group size may vary depending on class size. Exam code: GRA31651 Grading scale: Point scale leading to ECTS letter grade Resit: All components must, as a main rule, be retaken during next scheduled course |
A course of 1 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of 26-30 hours. Therefore a course of 6 ECTS credits corresponds to a workload of at least 160 hours.