APPLIES TO ACADEMIC YEAR 2016/2017

GRA 6440 User-driven Marketing Innovations

Responsible for the course
Fred Selnes

Department
Department of Marketing

Term
According to study plan

ECTS Credits
6

Language of instruction
English

Introduction
It has been a predominant view in marketing and management practice alike that firms are the drivers of innovation, mostly by providing new or improving existing products or services. However, more recently, researchers have shown that users are often the source of innovation. Beginning in the late 70’s, scholars presented an actual example, the so called “lead user” who becomes innovative due to a strong personal need for a product that is not provided by current market offering. Next to these rare lead users, more “ordinary users” have also begun to innovate. One central explanation for this trend is advances in communication and manufacturing technologies. The rise of the internet in the 1990’s as a new way to communicate and collaborate, and as a source for technical knowledge, has tremendously lowered the barriers for ordinary users to engage in innovative behavior and resulted in a remarkable amount of time and money invested in innovation by these users.

Marketing innovation is about developing and implementing new concepts relating to products, services, communication, pricing or distribution that will have a major impact on customer behavior and market performance. The ongoing digitalization of markets and marketing provides vast opportunities, and has accentuated the need for companies to re-invent their marketing programs. With the digitalization companies now have access to new sources of data and new opportunities for involving customers and other stakeholders in the innovation processes.

In this course, we will examine marketing innovation from the past to present. We will jointly find answers to questions such as “Why is user-driven innovation important?”, “What is marketing innovation and why is it important?” “What motivates companies to engage in user-driven marketing innovation?”, “How should companies organize and manage their development and implementation of marketing innovations?”

Learning outcome
The course is designed to provide you with a comprehensive overview of the topic of marketing innovation and hands-on experience with real marketing innovations. The course will document the distinctness of marketing innovation as opposed to other types of innovation, and it will review, evaluate and critique several subthemes. You will work with a real marketing innovation project in a team with other students and in close collaboration with a company and/or an advertising agency. More in detail, the course shall give you:

· Overview of trends driving opportunities and challenges in marketing innovation
· See distinct differences of user-driven and firm-driven innovation.
· Recognize what drives users to become innovative and how individual (self-related) and collective (others-related) reasons differ.
· Understand how firms can interact with their own innovating users (their customers) and how firms can even interact with users beyond their own customer base (“external users”).
· Understanding of managerial challenges in organizing marketing innovation
· In depth understanding of creativity and the marketing innovation process
· Ability to collect, analyze and use market and customer data in marketing innovation
· Ability to design and lead marketing innovation teams

If you have to miss class on a particular day, it is your responsibility to get notes from a classmate. Let me know as soon as possible if you have to miss a class. During the semester, if you experience any problem(s) with the class or any of the classmates I expect you to report any problem(s) that you are not able to resolve yourself to me as soon as possible. In this course class attendance is mandatory. Therefore, unexcused absence will result in a lower participation grade.


Examination
The course grade will be based on the following activities and weights:
40 % - Class participation, including written comments.
40 % - Term paper (8-10 pages) (Marketing innovation project)
20 % - Project presentation (Marketing innovation project)

For determining your course participation, I will evaluate your class participation in every session.
For fulfilling the written assignment, you will need to conduct a real marketing innovation project. We will assist in connecting student groups to companies or ad-agencies. The last grade component is your participation and discussion of the group project.