GBUS 8840

Course Description

Innovation plays an essential role in the development and achievement of long-term competitive advantage. This is a course in strategy and entrepreneurship with three main themes: Creating and Realizing Value, Prioritizing Opportunities, and Managing the Innovation Process. Within these themes, students will explore why innovation is invention that creates value and why some inventions do not create value; why projects involving the innovation process are notoriously difficult to value: how to set priorities when choosing among innovation opportunities; how to guide early stage research efforts toward potentially distant products; why managing the process requires thinking about the unfolding and often nonlinear stages; how multiple dimensions cumulate in success or failure; how to think about the many uncertainties and manage the risks such as running out of cash; how to deal with the changes of course, challenges of competition, setbacks, and forward leaps in managing big, long-term innovation efforts; and, most importantly, how the outcomes of this process depend on the people involved. This course deals with both small and large corporations and usually encompasses a range of technologies.