Overview

Class Central Tips

Not all organisations innovate, and those that do often find it difficult to initiate, develop, and deliver innovation consistently. Innovation management is crucial in leading valuable change and profits for companies of all sizes. This course will give you the skills for successful strategic innovation by exploring how the world’s most successful businesses use systematic processes to harness its power. You will learn about disruptive innovation and how businesses need to have an innovation strategy in place to stay ahead of the competition. You’ll look into how to embed a culture that fosters innovation in order to find opportunities and protect your core business before you move on to explore strategies to manage disruption. Collaborating with external partners may sound daunting but it can allow you to solve a multitude of innovation problems and reach a common goal much quicker. This course will guide you through the types of open innovation that can be utilised at various stages of an innovative strategy to create different dynamics. Design thinking (DT) allows teams to structure and manage ideation, development, and, ultimately, innovation. You’ll learn about the key elements and principles behind the design thinking process. You’ll also learn insights, hints and tips for practically applying design thinking from one of the world’s leading industry practitioners.

Syllabus

Week 1 - Challenges of innovation

This week, you’ll discuss the challenges of managing innovation in organisations, and explore key enablers for innovation. In addition, you will develop managerial approaches that are used to respond to disruptive innovation. You will be introduced to the sources and pitfalls that affect the successful management of innovation and learn how to differentiate between innovation in core business and transformative business. The activities will support you to identify the factors which will help you successfully manage innovation in your core business, describe the factors that make innovation disruptive for organisations and industries and develop managerial approaches that are used to respond to disruptive innovation. Towards the end of the week, there is an extended discussion between the educators, answering some of the learner questions often asked on this course.

Week 2 - Key capabilities of innovation

This week, you will explore in more detail the key capabilities that organisations need to manage innovation and examine the managerial and organisational responses to the challenges of managing for innovation. The activities will introduce the concept of open and collaborative innovation, the core elements of design thinking and the importance of human-centred design. You will evaluate the actions required in your own organisation for gaining value from open and collaborative innovation and explore the corporate knowledge and protectable intellectual property rights (IPRs). You will be able to identify risks associated with IP infringement and consider proactive and reactive strategies. Towards the end of the week you will analyse the current and desired innovation capabilities within your organisation and reflect on the results of the analysis.