APPLIES TO ACADEMIC YEAR 2013/2014

GRA 3157 Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity

Responsible for the course
Birgit H Jevnaker

Department
Department of Innovation and Economic Organisation

Term
According to study plan

ECTS Credits
6

Language of instruction
English

Introduction
This course is micro-oriented towards managing innovation, design and concept-creation in a collaborative context. It focuses on combinations of business creativity-, design and use-inspired methods that can help managers and innovators to identify opportunities and generate concepts with and for others to foster valuable innovations.
The course is related to realworld innovating in and between business enterprises and specialist groups in knowledge-based consultancies and creative industries. It is relevant for managing innovation, design and creativity in all kinds of organizations and useful in students' further work and careers.

Learning outcome
The objective is to give the students an initial, basic understandig of enabling crossdisciplinary innovation work with design and creativity-enhanced approaches that are useful when fostering something new in concept-creation with and for others. The course further aims to introduce and, to some extent, train the student in creative, collaborative efforts with diverse others. The learning is oriented toward ideation, design tools and cocreating approaches to managing for innovation.

Learning outcomes: After completion of the course the student can expect
- Acquired knowledge: to know about some fundamental activities, principal challenges, and potentials for managing innovation, design and concept-creation,
- Acquired skills: be able to participate in projects and collaborative work to explore and foster both creativity-based and design-inspired approaches and be able to contribute constructively to the managing aspects of innovation projects,
- Acquired attitudes in action: be able to contribute in presentations and help a team to reflect in critical-constructive ways, in speech and writing, on the possibilities and potential fallacies of innovation and idea work.

The collaborative work and writing assignments will help students to frame and reflect on innovation, design and concept-creating management issues, which can be useful also in the students' thesis work.

Prerequisites
Completion of GRA 3151 Theories of Innovation or GRA3136 New Venture Creation or equivalent course.

Compulsory reading
Books:
Cagan, Jonathan and Craig M. Vogel. 2013. Creating breakthrough products : revealing the secrets that drive global innovation. 2nd ed. FT Press. (Part Three may be skipped)
Kelley, Tom. 2001. The art of innovation : lessons in creativity from IDEO, America's leading design firm. Doubleday
Sewerin, Thomas. 2009. Teams, leadership and coaching. Tertulia books. Except p. 162-191 (voluntary reading)

Articles:
Additional articles, edited chapters, and material handed out and/or announced on course website
Jevnaker, Birgit H. 2003. Exploring the Innovating Inbetween: Industrial Design as Boundary Work. International Journal of New Product Development & Innovation Management. December/January. p. 339-358 (hand-out).

Other:
During the course there may be hand-outs and other material on additional topics relevant for the course and the examination.


Recommended reading

Other:
Recommendations to supplemental readings will be provided in the course syllabus.


Course outline
The course is designed to encourage the student to explore innovation challenges through creative cross disciplinary, design inspired and use-oriented methods. It includes how to help generate ideas and how to further work with the most promising ones in order to foster convincing proposals grounded in a collaborating team.

Issues to be covered will include:
- Introduction to the art of managing innovation, design and creativity;
- Fostering hot groups, diverse contributions and interactive idea work;
- Creativity-related process competencies;
- Tools for innovation;
- Exploring and understanding problems of use;
- Generating potentially valuable service/product innovation;
- Collaborative work across boundaries: crosspollination and integration;
- Presenting and validating the new in and between organizations.

Computer-based tools
Common digital tools such as powerpoint for presentations, digital group tools for collaboration, and active use of course website/It's learning are presumed.

Learning process and workload
A course of 6 ECTS credits corresponds to a workload of 160-180 hours.

The structure of the course will be highly interactive and current. Attendance is thus mandatory in this course. Students are expected to prepare explorative tasks and take part in workshops and discussions of project and case work. Highly current readings will expose you to the major issues, challenges, and opportunities of formulating, presenting and fostering something new for realworld settings.
Assigned group tasks and student presentations are mandatory to create a shared learning arena and make the course more playful. Groups will be collaborating on concept-creating tasks, and this may include external partners from enterprises, consultancies, and maybe relevant students from another educational institution, if feasible (plans for collaboration and task assigments will be specified and announced at the start of the course).

1. Term paper: One major assignment for the course will be a research paper (approx. 12-15 p. excl. references/appendices). Theoretical perspectives and illuminating realworld experiences (excerpts normally from the action research tasks in the course) are to be included to illuminate the topic. Options and final instructions will be delineated in the term paper exam instructions, and related to the collaborative tasks in the course.

2. Brief synopsis paper: Another assignment for the course is to write a brief reflective synopsis paper (approx. 4-5 p. excl. refererences/appendices) on a particular opportunity/challenge, theoretical perspectives and approaches/method (useful as a preparation and can be possible input for the final term paper). The context and final instructions are assigned by course leaders when the course starts.

A few other related task assignments need to be passed. Active participation in class dialogues, group work and action tasks is a basic way of learning concept-creation and managerial skills, so unexcused absence can result in a lower score.

Please note that it is the student’s own responsibility to obtain any information provided in class that is not included on the course homepage or text book.


Examination
25% Quality of Presentations, Class Contribution, Participation and Reflection.
50% Term paper, written in groups up to 3 students (in special circumstances individually).
25% Brief Synopsis Paper, written individually.
All parts of the evalutation need to be passed in order to get a grade in this course.

Attendance is mandatory in this course. Specific information regarding student evaluation beyond the information given in the course description will be provided in class. This information may be relevant for requirements for term papers or other hand-ins, and/or where class participation can be one of several elements of the overall evaluation.

This is a course with continuous assessment (several exam elements) and one final exam code. Each exam element will be graded using points on a scale (e.g. 0-100). The elements will be weighted together according to the information in the course description in order to calculate the final letter grade for the course. You will find detailed information about the point system and the cut off points with reference to the letter grades on the course site in It’s learning.

Examination code(s)
GRA 31571 continuous assessment accounts for 100% of the final grade in the course GRA 3157.

Examination support materials
N/A. Exam aids at written examiniations are explained under exam information in the student portal @bi. Please note use of calculator and dictionary in the section on examaids

Re-sit examination
The assessment in some courses is based on more than one exam code.
Where this is the case, you may retake only the assessed components of one of these exam codes.
Where this is not the case, all of the assessed components of the course must be retaken.
All retaken examinations will incur an additional fee.

Additional information
Honor Code
Academic honesty and trust are important to all of us as individuals, and represent values that are encouraged and promoted by the honor code system. This is a most significant university tradition. Students are responsible for familiarizing themselves with the ideals of the honor code system, to which the faculty are also deeply committed.

Any violation of the honor code will be dealt with in accordance with BI’s procedures for cheating. These issues are a serious matter to everyone associated with the programs at BI and are at the heart of the honor code and academic integrity. If you have any questions about your responsibilities under the honor code, please ask.