GRA 6834 Digital and Sustainable Business Development
GRA 6834 Digital and Sustainable Business Development
Much of an organization's value creation - and certainly most of its competitive advantage - comes from innovation. Innovation can happen through changes in technology - how an organization does things - or in business models - how it gets paid. With the increasing focus on sustainability, new avenues of innovation opens, both in increasing a company's sustainability performance, and in creating new businesses with sustainability as their main offering. This course will explore theories and cases of innovation and technology evolution within a strategic and sustainable context, as well as the more theoretical concepts of dynamic organizational capabilities.
The course aims to give the students a thorough understanding of strategic innovation management - how organizations change to adapt to changes in the external environment, evolve their technology, and understand the nature of technological change. After attending this course, the student will have learned to
- understand how technology develops and the drivers of technology evolution
- understand the concept of business models and business model innovation
- understand the challenges and opportunities offered by sustainability as a business objective
- understand how industries are influenced by technological change and business model evolution
- understand the challenges involved in formulating strategic change and adapting an organization to external technological change, particularly disruptive change
- analyze technology-rich and complicated business cases and recommend strategic initiatives
- be able to identify disruptive innovations and formulate technology strategies to adopt or overcome them
- be able to identify obstacles to innovation and suggest ways to overcome them
- be able to participate in groups to analyse problems and communicate the analysis to others
- Critical reflection and thinking, developing technology and strategic insight
- Appreciation for the complexity of managing and introducing technologies
- Recognition of technology hype and hubris in all its varied an interesting forms
- Knowing how to learn and keep learning about technological change
- Technology evolution and technology history
- Disruptive and sustaining technologies/innovations
- Entering new markets with technology
- Linking strategy and innovation
- Sustainability as a strategic and technological imperative
- Building strategic innovation capability
- Technology market structure and evolution
- Componentization and integration
- Industry structures and competitive environments in eBusiness
- Electronic markets and market facilitators
- Technology implementation and institutionalization
- The politics of technology and innovation
The course is structured as a combination of lectures, discussions, in-class activities, case analysis, and case discussion, with a heavy emphasis on the latter. Substantial preparation and active involvement during and between classes is required. The course carries a heavy workload and the student must be prepared to spend significant time preparing cases and other material for discussion and analysis, in class and in groups with other students.
The course is taught in cooperation with the Institute of Informatics at the UiO, meaning that about half the classes will meet in Ole-Johan Dahls house, UiO, and about half the classes will have UiO students coming to BI and participating in class there.
This course has a mandatory coursework requirement: 75% active participation. The coursework requirement must be approved to be able to sit the exams.
It is the student’s own responsibility to obtain any information provided in class.
All courses in the Masters programme will assume that students have fulfilled the admission requirements for the programme. In addition, courses in second, third and/or fourth semester can have specific prerequisites and will assume that students have followed normal study progression. For double degree and exchange students, please note that equivalent courses are accepted.
Disclaimer
Deviations in teaching and exams may occur if external conditions or unforeseen events call for this.
English proficiency (oral and written) is presumed, as is ability to and willingness to speak in class.
| Mandatory coursework | Courseworks given | Courseworks required | Comment coursework |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mandatory | 1 | 1 | 75% attendance is required. Students are expected not only to be present in the classroom, but also be prepared to discuss the cases and other literature specified for the lecture. |
| Assessments |
|---|
Exam category: Submission Form of assessment: Submission PDF Exam/hand-in semester: First Semester Weight: 60 Grouping: Group/Individual (1 - 3) Duration: 1 Semester(s) Comment: Term paper, normally in the form of writing a teaching case Exam code: GRA 68342 Grading scale: ECTS Resit: Examination when next scheduled course |
Exam category: Submission Form of assessment: Portfolio Assessment PDF Exam/hand-in semester: First Semester Weight: 40 Grouping: Individual Duration: 2 Week(s) Comment: Portfolio evaluation, based on various smaller, individual assignments such as online simulation, presentations and other, smaller assignments before some classes Exam code: GRA 68343 Grading scale: ECTS Resit: Examination when next scheduled course |
All exams must be passed to get a grade in this 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.
