Dr Lourdes Sosa

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Management, Organisations and Governance. This course is not available as an outside option.

This half-unit course will develop students' abilities to understand the effect of innovation on the competitive process of firms. Innovation is therefore seen as a tool firms (and their competitors) can use to push the competitive process in their favour. At the end of the course students will be able to design their own innovation initiatives as well as evaluate the innovation initiatives of other organisations to decide on appropriate competitive responses. The course advances from cross-sectional (short-term) analysis to a longitudinal (long-term) perspective.

Topics include strategic, disruptive and architectural innovation, competence destruction, dynamic capabilities, ambidexterity in organisations, among others.

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

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6, in line with departmental policy.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the MT.

Barney, J.B. (1995) Looking inside for Competitive Advantage (Academy of Management Executive); Dierickx, I., Cool, K. (1989) Asset Stock Accumulation and Sustainability of Competitive Advantage (Management Science); Christensen, C.M., Bower, J.L. (1996) Customer Power, Strategic Investment, and the Failure of Leading Firms (Strategic Management Journal); Winter, S.G. (2003) Understanding Dynamic Capabilities (Strategic Management Journal).

Exam (60%, duration: 2 hours) in the main exam period.
Essay (40%, 2000 words).