Aims

Entrepreneurship and innovation management, specifically new product/service development, has become a new imperative in strategic marketing and management. Everybody wants to be the next Google, Tesla, or Netflix; nobody wants to be Kodak, Blockbuster, or BlackBerry. Today, “Innovate or die” or “innovation is the source of competitive advantage” are common clichés in any business/technology related conferences, magazines, academic journals, and books. While these clichés are inspiring for many managers, achieving success through entrepreneurial action is not easy and the failure rate is high.

The focus of entrepreneurship and innovation management is to enable a firm to respond to an external or internal opportunity, and uses its creative efforts to introduce new ideas, products, or services. Successful new products/services, in turn, help capture and retain market share, increase profitability, and achieve competitive advantage. What characterizes such a process of innovation leading to success? Holistic integration of marketing, design and technology, combined with strategic thinking is the only way to manage innovation in a sustainable way.

This module examines entrepreneurship and innovation management from a strategic marketing perspective; enabling students explore principles in relation to entrepreneurship and innovation management, specifically new product/service development. This module will be delivered through introducing relevant literature, learning experiences, and industry-linked case studies; so that theory and practice go together.

Outline Of Syllabus

Semester 1 – the focus during this semester is on New Product Development and New Service Development
-       What entrepreneurship is and why it matters
-       Source of innovation: where do ideas come from?
-       Entrepreneurial decision-making and personal resource ‘fit’
-       Customer journey mapping and market discovery
-       Exploring collaboration
-       Experimentation versus planning
-       Building the service innovation case
-       Stages of new services development
-       Methods of new services development
-       Design Thinking methodology
-       Customer Co-Creation in new services development
-       New services development launch management
-       New services branding and positioning
-       Design of Services Networks

Semester 2 – the focus during this semester is on working on Building a minimum viable product for a client.
-       Building a viable business model
-       Design Thinking for new product and service development
-       Application of Design Thinking methodology to real-life organisational issues
-       Wicked problems

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

This module will be delivered through introducing relevant literature, group learning experiences, and industry-linked case studies; so that theory and practice go together. There will be a mix of lectures, seminars, and group discussions held throughout the year. Students are in control of their learning in this module.
In semester two, the module will use real life clients as students work in groups to respond to a new service or innovation of the service. Issues will come from business, organisational, or societal areas. In tackling real life clients’ students will develop; employability skills, collaboration skills, critical thinking, reflection and self-awareness, whilst improving student engagement. Working with real clients ensures classes are provide hands on support for students to apply the theory and put into action and practise.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Both assessments provide you with the opportunity to act independently and working as group, confidently and flexibly when evaluating and interpreting complex problems and selecting relevant tools/methods to aid decision making.

Through the individual assessments and formative group work, you will further develop your skills in communicating clearly, fluently and effectively using contemporary and traditional media formats to justify the findings of your investigation.