Innovation Management and Marketing

• Being able to use Blackboard or to learn quickly how to use it.
  
• Prior experience with academic writing, e.g. through bachelor’s thesis.
• Being able to work academically.

The course aims at providing the student with competences to develop recommendations for action, based on a scientific and structured analysis and by using theoretical frameworks to justify their decisions. As a basis for this, it is the aim that students build knowledge on how innovation development in companies can be managed in a complex interplay between the competencies and capabilities of the organization and the needs and wants of the customers and markets.

The course thus establishes an explicit link between the marketing literature and the literature on product development with a particular emphasis on international and/or new markets. Further, the course enables students to develop skills to identify and reflect on key issues for innovation management as well as to present and provide constructive feedback to other students.   The course also aims to prepare students for writing their master thesis by enhancing their skills in writing a theoretically guided discussion.  

Finally, the course supports the student in developing skills to conduct complex customer and market research and more general problem solving competences which are necessary for fulfilling innovation and marketing tasks for firms operating in globalized markets. For this end, the course provides knowledge about innovation and market development theories, skills in developing and conceptualizing an innovation, as well as specific practical capabilities.  

Development of new products, processes and services in an international environment is an inherently interactive, cross-functional and inter-organizational (‘open’) process. This course offers an introduction to product/service development and innovation from a marketing as well as innovation management perspective and identifies the key points of contact both internally in the organization and with international external partners. Innovation is understood as the first commercialization of an invention where an innovation is viewed as a stepwise development from opportunity recognition and discovery, through development, design, business case shaping towards market launch. 

The course contains the following themes:

• Innovation / invention 
• Theories and management of innovation processes 
• Opportunity recognition and discovery of opportunities
• Creativity Assessing the market potential and product positioning 
• Identifying strategic capabilities
• Assessment of market potential for new technologies 
• The process of innovation and external partners (open innovation) 
• Internal and external management of innovation projects

The aim is that students, by participation in this course, can:

• account for, evaluate, apply and compare theoretical frameworks in the intersection between innovation management and marketing
• conduct independent research, evaluate, and structure literature in the fields of innovation management and marketing
• apply theoretical frameworks to real world cases
• describe and evaluate an innovation process in a given case by discussing the concept generation, the concept evaluation, the development, and launch of the new product
• describe and analyze particular challenges and problems in a case using the theoretical models and tools provided in the curriculum analyze the international environment including the internal and external cooperation / partnerships needed for product development
• generalize at a level extending beyond the actual case, e.g. as a reflection of how to use existing theories and models to lead a specific market innovation project.

Examples: Joe Tidd & John Bessant (latest edition): Strategic Innovation Management. Wiley. ISBN: 978-1-118-45723-8 

Compendium of electronic articles.

Lectures, class discussions, case work, and project work. 

The lectures are designed to create consistency and an overview of the subject. In this connection, group work is used to test and exercise some of the taught innovation management methods in practice. In addition, the students will through a project learn to develop and launch an innovation in a close-to-reality simulation setting.  

Case studies and exercises are used as a background for students to learn about new tools and to directly apply them to different situations and subjects. Students will also receive the opportunity to present their preliminary case solutions in order to receive feedback and discuss their presentations with the other students and teachers. These exercises will help the students to prepare themselves for the case assignment. Further, preparation of an individual report strengthens the students’ skills to apply the learned theories into current problems related to innovation management. 

Scheduled classes:

2 x 2 hours weekly in 11 weeks.

The teaching activities result in an estimated distribution of the work effort of an average student as follows:
Lectures: 44 hours.
Preparation of lectures: 110 hours.
Literature search: 15 hours.
Project work: 20 hours.
Preparation for exam: 81 hours.
In total: 270 hours.