Organizations increasingly open their innovation processes to leverage knowledge from external sources such as research institutes, suppliers, and users (outside-in) and to exploit internal knowledge through external use such as licensing, selling, or spinning out innovations. Open innovation has been found to reduce costs, accelerate time to market, and create new revenue streams for both start-ups and established firms.
Nonetheless, managing open innovation is difficult. The new way of innovating also creates new challenges. For instance, when innovations are not only developed within, but co-created with other companies and communities, questions of intellectual property (IP) become salient. In addition, organizations need to develop new capabilities such as formulating open calls for crowdsourcing contests, sustaining participation in innovation communities, and managing knowledge outflows by selectively revealing knowledge to the public.
The course “E&I Zone: Challenges with Open Innovation” focuses on the opportunities and challenges that firms have to deal with when they open their innovation processes. After successfully completing the course, participants will be familiar with the issues that arise for entrepreneurs and managers of companies in the formulation of open innovation strategies.
Students will develop their skills working on a case in a team, thus refining their abilities in group works, case analyses, presentations, and classroom discussions.
The course is structured as follows:
Day 1 & 2 are dedicated to exploring the concept of open innovation and elaborating on strategies for managing outside-in and inside-out knowledge flows. Lectures comprise case studies, selected articles, and practical examples. Students have time to work on their case study guided by the instructors.
Day 3: Students present their findings in-class and receive feedback from their peers and the faculty.
This course targets all students of the major "Entrepreneurship & Innovation", equally those who intend to become independent with their own innovative business idea, those who want to invest into such ideas, e.g., as a venture capitalist, or students who are interested to work in corporate innovation management or who decide on a career in innovation consulting.
The teaching language is English.
