Businesses today are faced with rapidly changing environments and an unknown level of uncertainty. Thus, the reliability of traditional knowledge decreases and experimentation and the testing of hypotheses become more crucial. Questions such as „Does the market prefer prototype A or B?“, “How can we improve our next product?” or “Which of our numerous product ideas should we pursue?” require hypotheses and tests which ideally can be done with relatively low effort.

This course intends to stress the connection between challenges from the practice and scientific methods by teaching how to consolidate managers’ ideas and scientific rigor in carrying out an innovation challenge. Students will learn about a specific form of open innovation, namely crowdsourcing, and investigate open questions in the design of crowdsourcing challenges in a real project. Students will work in teams on questions for which they will develop hypotheses and test these in the field. Theoretical input on how to set up and execute projects as well as appropriate methods to analyze data will be provided.

• analyze and assess crowdsourcing initiatives from a theoretical and practical perspective,
• understand the underlying drivers and mechanisms of such initiatives,
• understand selected research methods and thecorresponding scientific rigor, and
• design and execute crowdsourcing projects

• efficiently work and communicate in an international team,
• work on solutions for innovative practical problems, and
• communicateand present efficiently and effectively.

• Individual participation (30%)
• Working paper (20%)
• Final paper (20%)
• Final presentation (30%)