Dr Aleksi Aaltonen

This course is available on the MSc in Management of Information Systems and Digital Innovation and MSc in Management, Organisations and Governance. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course will use controlled access and space will be limited to 60 students.

The course aims to give the students theoretical and practical insights into the key issues informing the design of contemporary information technology (IT). The course relates the diversity of contemporary IT developments to organisational innovation and emphasises the increased complexity of this challenge with ubiquitous and pervasive technologies affording intimate everyday experiences relying on digitisation and convergence of device functionality, data, content, systems, services and infrastructures. This complexity, which has emerged within the past couple of decades both offer possibilities for innovation, but also significant risks. Mobile and ubiquitous IT will feature as an illustrative example of IT innovation throughout. Throughout the course small groups of students will describe an existing complex real-life set of services and suggest design improvements, sensitised by theoretical elements from the course. Subsequently, each individual group member will write a reflective essay based on the group discussions. Topics addressed will be: Digital infrastructure innovation; Digital platform strategies; Designing technology affordance diversity; Understanding technology performances; Individual interaction intimacy; Amplified teams; The technological organisation; Global crowd innovation with IT; Global technology innovation tussles; Business innovation with information technology. The weekly seminars will consist of presentations and discussions offering students opportunity to critically reflect on theoretical and pragmatic issues related to the subject matter of the course, such as; the IT artifact and ecosystem, the role of IT in business innovation, understanding the paradoxes of technology performances, intimate technology experiences, IT mediated team-working, the IT-enabled organisation, innovating global IT mediated crowds, innovation as organisational tussles, and the role of IT-based innovation for business development.

20 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the LT.

A reading week will take place in W6. There will be no teaching during this week.

Classes are based around reading and discussing selected journal articles from the course study pack. Formative feedback is provided on class participation.

Arthur, B. (2009): The Nature of Technology. Free Press.; Baldwin, C. Y. and K. B. Clark (2000): Design Rules. MIT Press; Beniger, J. R. (1986): The Control Revolution. Harvard University Press; Benkler, Y. (2006): The Wealth of Networks. Yale University Press; Braa, K, C. Sørensen, and B. Dahlbom, ed. (2000): Planet Internet. Studentlitteratur; Ciborra, C. (2002): The Labyrinths of Information. OUP; Dourish, P. (2001): Where the Action Is. MIT Press; Elliott, A. and J. Urry (2010): Mobile Lives. Routledge.; Felstead, A., N. Jewson, & S. Walters (2005): Changing Places of Work. Palgrave Macmillan; Garud, R., Kumaraswamy, A., & Langlois, R., ed. (2003) Managing in the Modular Age. Blackwell.; Gawer (2009): Platforms, Markets and Innovation. Edward Elgar.; Goffman, E. (1959): The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Bantam; Gratton, L. (2011): The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here. Collins.; Greenfield, A. (2006): Everyware. Peachpit Press.; Harper, R. (2010): Texture: Human Expression in the Age of Communications Overload. The MIT Press.; Hislop, D., ed. (2008): Mobility and Technology in the Workplace. Routledge; Kallinikos, J. (2006): The Consequences of Information. Edward Elgar; Kallinikos (2011): Governing Through Technology. Palgrave.; Ling, R. (2008): New Tech, New Ties. The MIT Press; Norman, D. (1988): The Psychology of Everyday Things. USA: Basic Books.; Norman, D. (2010): Living with Complexity. MIT Press.; Simon (1969): The Sciences of the Artificial. MIT Press.; Sørensen, C. (2011): Enterprise Mobility. Palgrave; Suchman, L. A. (2006): Human and Machine Reconfigurations. Cambridge University Press; Van De Ven, A. H., D. Polley, R. Garud, & S. Venkataraman (2008): The Innovation Journey. Oxford University Press; Weinberger, D. (2008): Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder. Henry Holt; Weizenbaum, J. (1976): Computer Power and Human Reason. Penguin Books; Yates, J. (1989): Control through Communication. Johns Hopkins University Press; Zittrain, J. (2008): The Future of the Internet. Allen Lane; Zuboff, S. (1987): In the Age of the Smart Machine. Basic Books; Zuboff, S. & J. Maxmin (2002): The Support Economy. Penguin.

Project (50%) and coursework (50%, 2500 words).

This consists of a group project (50%) and a 2500 word individual report (50%).