Innovation was listed among the top 3 in-demand skills in 2023 (LinkedIn). Today job descriptions are packed with catchy buzzwords, looking for “out-of-the-box thinkers” who are ready to “move fast and break things”, solve “ill-defined problems” in an innovative way.

Despite that, for many of us innovation is associated with creative geniuses: artists, musicians, architects, engineers, or tech gurus working day and night in their studios or labs on something completely groundbreaking.  While this sounds very romantic, it is not all that innovation is.

To bring innovation into practice one needs to be both romantic and pragmatic. Indeed, it is important to break things, be creative, dive into broad problems and draw with big strokes. Yet, you also need to keep your feet on the ground: critically apply theoretical knowledge on creativity and innovation to your case, define and structure your approach, assess and stress-test your idea against the reality. Without the latter, the fuzzy creative sparks will never become anything more.  

In this course you will innovate working on practical business problems. During the course you will apply creativity and innovation techniques to your case and go through the common steps of product (or service) development.

The aim of this course is to provide participants with experience of

• applying creativity and innovation techniques to practical cases;
• working on ill-defined business problems in a semi-structured way (i.e. giving idea development structure without impairing creative flow);
• finding balance between imperfection, precision and viability;
• communicating your ideas to others in a tailored way.

Participation in all sessions is mandatory. You may miss up to max. 20% of in-class hours. However, please note that every next course section builds up on the prior one. Thus, absences should be minimized to ensure your optimal learning outcomes.

• Lectures on theoretical and practical foundations;
• In-class workshop-style ideation sessions;
• Group project intermit work and final presentation;
• Self-study, i.e. in-depth investigation of creativity and innovation methods relevant and applicable for your course project, ideation, preparation of group project.

Grading will be based on the following components:

• In-class participation 30 pts
• Individual ideation exercises 20 pts
• Group project (ongoing work project development) 35 pts
• Final presentation 15 pts

The group work grade elements (50 pts) will be peer evaluated. The peer review will be used to assess the individual contribution of each group member to the group tasks. Outstanding or poor peer evaluation score can result in the up-/down-grading of your scores for the group project tasks.

Grades are as follows: 90 pts or more: 1 (= excellent), 80 pts or more: 2 (= good), 70 pts or more: 3 (=satisfactory), 60 pts or more: 4 (= sufficient), 59 pts or less: 5 (= fail).

This course is part of the elective pool "Advanced Topics in Marketing" of the MSc Marketing at WU.

MSc Marketing students can only register if they have successfully completed the following mandatory courses from the 1st year:

• Management by Experiments (5 ECTS)
• Marketing Analytics (7.5 ECTS)
• Digital Marketing (5 ECTS)

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