Innovation management
Innovation Management Coursework: You are the leader of a business division of a large company. Due to the tough current economic climate a limited budget has been allocated to your division by the corporate centre. In addition, in the given economic context, consumers have become more demanding: they mostly prefer good quality products and services at a reasonable price. The corporate centre’s management team has challenged you with a new task: that of finding an innovative solution that will enable your division to create new market space and attract a substantial number of consumers in the near future. As a leader of the business division you are in charge of a team of 8 individuals (who are expert in specific functional areas) and engage with them through workshops and weekly meetings. The aim of these workshops and meetings is to define a new business concept to be brought to the market. You are also responsible for overseeing the implementation phase of the new business concept and the launch of the final innovative output to the market.
To this end, you are required to produce a report which provides a description of your business case for innovation and a reflective assessment of the most critical aspects surrounding the implementation and launch of the innovation. In your report ensure that you provide a brief outline of the large organization you have selected and the composition of the team you lead. Also, ensure that you provide sufficient justification for the new business concept by having regard to the following internal and external elements: 1. Industry and cultural context 2. Organizational context 3. Strategic model of innovation 4. Knowledge deployment 5. Methods of collaboration 6. Protecting innovation 7. Managing risks: failure and imitation 8. Commercialisation. Format of the coursework: report. Word limit: 4,500 (appendices, tables, diagrams and references are not included in the word limit). LEARNING OUTCOMES On successful completion of this module the students will be able to: 1. identify and classify different business models of innovation management available in practice; 2. develop critical understanding of the limitations of the theoretical models of innovation; 3. apply the relevant theoretical frameworks of innovation management to a real business context; 4. conduct a written auditing of the firm’s capability to manage innovation effectively. ASSESSMENT CRITERIA In order to achieve the threshold standard for the award of credits for this module, the student must meet the following criteria related to the learning outcomes described above: 1. a satisfactory grasp with the knowledge of the relevant theoretical models of innovation models available in practice; 2. a satisfactory ability to apply the theoretical frameworks of innovation models and to adapt them to a real business context; 3. an adequate ability to undertake a written auditing of the firm’s capability to manage innovation effectively; 4. an adequate ability to work in teams in order to exercise critical judgement over the limitations of the theoretical frameworks of innovation management; and 5. an adequate ability to solve the above limitations (point 4) in a constructive way. Regarding sources, please use mainly reports (such as Mintel), online journals are also acceptable. Please do not use books or papers because we are not supposed to.
The company has to be a real major company and a real business division as well. Please use DIFFERENT theory that suit the company under examination (not only 1 or 2). Examples could be product diversification; the 3 way to deal with risk management and potential threats (instructionist, learning and selectionist approach); different forms of intellectual property (IP) and how they can help the company’s success….and so on.
