Management of Innovation

Innovation, the successful introduction of a new device, method, or material, isacknowledged to be the most important driver of competitive success in manyindustries and has crucial impact for societal and economic development.Interest in management of innovation has traditionally centered on firm-internalaspects, such as the organization of internal innovation processes, activitiesand collaborators, and how to deal with the dynamics stemming from industrialor technological changes. In recent years, however, there has been a surge ininterest among scholars and practitioners in methods, tools, and approachesthat allow firms to tap firm-external sources and (social) networks to fill theirinnovation pipelines. The emergence of this phenomenon has given rise tonovel and promising research agendas for the years to come and has beenassociated with labels such as open and user innovation, crowd sourcing, andopen source.In acknowledgement of this development, the aim of this class is to providestudents with an advanced understanding of the management of innovationand covers a broad range of literature from foundational theories to most recentresearch in the field. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the field, the coursewill reflect the theoretical underpinnings of management of innovation in relatedresearch streams such as organization theory, management science,organizational economics, psychology, and sociology to tackle the differentlevels of analysis of innovation: on the individual, group, organizational, andindustry levels. The course will thereby address particularly the challenges,research questions and (practical) implications related to product and serviceinnovation with substantial elements of technological change.