MG202: Open Innovation

Course Content

To stay relevant in today’s dynamic marketplace, companies must continually seek ways to generate new ideas and innovate in order to remain competitive. Open innovation is a fresh take on innovation whereby a firm looks beyond its boundaries to exploit the creative power of users, communities and customers to co-develop new products, services and processes. Whether it is the fortune 500 companies that have used open innovation to transform their businesses (e.g. Proctor and Gamble and IBM) or even start-ups (such as Istockphoto); Open Innovation, through tools like crowdsourcing or open sourcing is disrupting markets and altering the nature of industries.

This highly participatory and engaging course aims to inspire and empower you to lead or effectively engage in the practical design of open innovation projects, from ideation to implementation; through building or leveraging on-line communities. It combines cutting-edge open innovation theory (grounded in network, economic and organisational behaviour perspectives) with practical application strategies and will include training from industry experts who implement Open Innovation to transform businesses. Case studies and a group project will allow you to sharpen and synthesise all these insights and bring to life issues like motivating and incentivising crowds, aggregating crowd data, attaining a wise crowd and the limitations of utilising crowds.

Topics covered include:

Exploring Open Innovation

• The emergence of Open Innovation
• The difference between Open Innovation and other sources of external innovation.
• Types of Open Innovation tools -Crowdsourcing, Lead Users, Innovation Intermediaries, Design intermediaries, Innomediaries, Open Source
• Choosing the right Open Innovation tool for different problem sets

Executing Open Innovation

• The innovation process, from ideation to retention
• The challenges of implementing Open Innovation
• The drivers of Open Innovation Success
• Tools and frameworks to plan and implement Open Innovation

Enhancing Open Innovation

• Strategies like Business Model Innovation used to exploit the value of Open Innovation
• Learnings from an emerging range of companies using  open business models 

Course Outcomes

By the end of this course you will be able to

• Demonstrate an in-depth, critical understanding of Open Innovation in the context of wider innovation literature
• Differentiate between the distinctive forms of Open Innovation
• Understand the best Open Innovation tools to accomplish your objectives
• Identify and predict sources of challenges associated with Open Innovation implementation
• Develop possible solutions that address those challenges

The course also integrates and deepens your knowledge, insights and Open Innovation skills through the design and implementation of an Open Innovation group project

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Texts*

There is no set text for this course. Sample articles / chapters include

• Chesbrough, H.W. (2003). Open Innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Boston: Harvard Business School Press  ( chapter 1-3)
• Chesbrough, H.  & Appleyard, M.M. (2007) Open Innovation and Strategy. California Management Review, 50(1),  (pp. 57-76)
• Huston, L. and Sakkab, N. 2006. Connect and develop. Inside Procter and Gamble’s new model for innovation. Harvard business review

Students will be given electronic access to the full list of cases/texts/articles at the beginning of the course.

*A more detailed reading list will be supplied prior to the start of the programme

**Course content, faculty and dates may be subject to change without prior notice