This is an introductory course combining innovation strategies, technology and marketing for international development. The course emphasizes the use of innovation to face grand societal challenges such as the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).The lecture sessions introduce proven solutions to problems in the innovation field, especially in the development area, the case sessions illustrate the application of these techniques, while the practice sessions provide an opportunity for you to develop a concrete plan for new innovation approaches to support the implementation of innovation for sustainable development.

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

• name all 17 Sustainable Development Goals
• identify major innovation theories
• critically examine how to make innovation and technology work for sustainable development
• combine analytics, frameworks, and research for maximum potential.

As this this is a highly interactive course regular attendance is mandatory. You should view class participation as an opportunity to both ask questions to enhance your understanding of the material and suggest examples that demonstrate such understanding. You learn by attending classes and your peers learn from your participation. However, emergencies do happen. One missed class is excused but be aware that class participation makes up a considerable stake of your final grade and, therefore, an absence may affect your grading. 

The course is designed to be interactive, practical and relevant. We will cover examples from a range of different disciplines.

• Each class will include a lecture, development of new tools and techniques, and practical application to specific cases and examples.
• We will have industry visitors from startups, international organizations and the corporate world, who will share their experiences in a way that complements the specific topics of the class.
• The class will also have interactive “in-class labs” focusing on developing hard skills for management and marketing of technology projects and startups.
• We will employ design-thinking approaches to arrive at industry solutions for sustainable development.

The assessment of students' performances and their aggregation towards final grades will be base on the following elements:

Class participation - 20% (individual): Given this highly interactive course, active participation is inevitable. It is imperative that you prepare course materials, particularly case studies and readings, and come to class with a series of comments that you think will be interesting to the class. Your colleagues are counting on your insight.

Case presentation - 30% (team): In addition to discussing the 17 Goals in class, your team will give a presentation on one of the SDGs. The case write-up is due at the beginning of the class when that case is to be discussed. Each case presentation consists of approximately 10 slides or any other way of presentation material.

Final case- 40% (team): Each team selects innovation approaches to support the implementation of one Sustainable Development Goal. The project deliverables are as follows and they are equally weighed in project grading.

• A written business case for your Action-Learning project

• An in-class presentation of your business case during the last class session

Peer rating -10%: Each team member will be assessed by peer group members