Strategic Innovation Management

llsmf2015  2022-2023  Louvain-la-Neuve

Strategic Innovation Management
5.00 credits
22.5 h + 7.5 h
Q1
Teacher(s)
Paque Bernard; Paque Bernard (compensates Vas Alain); Vas Alain;
Language
English
Prerequisites
The material covered in the corporate strategy course of bachelor in Business engineering. More generally, in terms of competencies, the students are expected to have knowledge of the basic concepts of strategic management.
Main themes
The design and implementation of innovation-based strategies by corporations.
Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :

1 The purpose of the course is to develop students’ knowledge in corporate strategy with a specific focus on the strategic issues raised by IT innovations and, more generally, the rise of the knowledge economy. The course is a level II course in corporate strategy. It means we expect that the students have already attended an introductory course in strategic management and have acquired the fundamentals of strategic management (e.g.: external and internal analysis; generic strategies; portfolio analysis).
The study of corporate strategy is thus based on a synthetic approach that must look at the company as a whole and look at it from the perspective of its future, while expectations are becoming more and more uncertain.
The learning objectives are the following:
  • Help students develop their capability to recognize the strategic issues of innovation in terms of strategy formulation and implementation;
  • Help students develop their vision despite the complexity of business contingencies and determine a long-term path of development for their company; in an innovative way, in connection with its environment and other stakeholders;
  • Help students make strategic decisions integrating both the benefits for the company but also the costs and the risks for the company;
  • Help students improve their communication skills to clearly present their strategic reasoning and justify the “raison d’être” of their decisions;
  • Help students integrate the very concrete stakes that top managers face. In particular, strategic innovation requires to make decisions in highly turbulent and uncertain contexts. The confrontation with real company situations, - through case studies and BOSS simulation - will create the link between the more theoretical concepts and the concrete and pragmatic field of application that these concepts allow to address.
 
Content
The main topics of the course are developed to introduce students to innovation strategies, open systems and new forms of organizations and market structures, like the multi-sided platforms. A complementary objective of the course is to help students adopt the perspective of CEOs within the company. At this level, top managers must make decisions for the company on a whole. It thus matters to adopt a bird’s eye view on the challenges the company meets. For that reason, the course puts the emphasis on the practical dimension of strategy, based on the extensive use of a strategy simulation, on business cases and on conferences by speakers from the business community.
Teaching methods
The course is an eight-week course, including the final evaluation week. Details of each week are provided at the end of the note. The course is based on the following pillars:
  • Lectures
The course is devoted to innovation and digital strategy. Each concept and framework will be presented by referring to real-word situations in knowledge-based companies.
  • Practice-oriented experience sharing
During those lectures, light will be shed on the practices. The lecturers will wear their “practitioner” hats on the occasion of those lectures and share their experience obtained in firms and consulting assignments. Those lectures are aimed at bridging theory and practice.
Evaluation methods
The continuous involvement of the students throughout the semester is a key criteria for their final grade. The continuous involvement represents therefore an important weight in the final grade. More precisely, the final grade includes a collective and an individual part.
Individual part
60% for a final written exam
Collective part
  1. 25% for BOSS simulation
  2. Only one evaluation in the collective part, 40% for the company cases
Students who failed the November session (first session), can register for the August-September session (second session). In this case, the individual assessment of each student will count for 100% of the total grade. Important note: if too few students are registered for the second session examination, the written exam will be replaced by an oral exam in English.
Other information
Additional information on calendaring and group work methods will be provided during the course.
Online resources
All interactions on teaching materials, references and processing of case works and presentations is managed on Moodle.
Bibliography
  • Gailly B. (2018) Navigating Innovations, chap. 2, Palgrave.
  • Christensen, CM; Raynor, M; McDonald, R. What is disruptive innovation? Harvard Business Review. 93, 12, 44-53, Dec. 2015.
  • Linda A. Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove, Kent Lineback, The Capabilities Your Organization Needs to Sustain Innovation, Harvard Business Review, Jan. 2015.
  • Michael Schrage, How Innovation Ecosystems Turn Outsiders into Collaborators, Harvard Business Review, Apr. 2014.
  • Kim W, Mauborgne R. Red Ocean Traps. Harvard Business Review. March 2015; 93(3):68-73.
  • Kim, W.C. and Mauborgne, R.A., 2014. Blue ocean strategy, expanded edition: How to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant. Harvard business review Press. PART 1 & 2 (p.1 – 146).
  • http://www.startupwerkboek.nl/startupcenter/BlueOceanStrategy.pdf
  • Hagiu, Andrei, and Elizabeth J. Altman. "Finding the Platform in Your Product: Four Strategies That Can Reveal Hidden Value." Harvard Business Review 95, no. 4 (July–August 2017): 94–100.
  • Belleflamme P. and Neysen N. (2017), The Rise and Fall of Take Eat Easy or Why Markets are not Easy to Take in the Sharing Economy. Digiworld Economic Journal, 4th q., no. 108, pp. 59-76.
  • Curchod, C., Patriotta, G., Cohen, L., & Neysen, N. (2019). Working for an Algorithm: Power Asymmetries and Agency in Online Work Settings. Administrative Science Quarterly
  • Managing in a Post-Covid19 Era, ESCP Impact Papers, especially
    • Covid-19 and the scale-up of the platform revolution. R. Coeurderoy & U. Wiszniowska
    • A perspective on impact of covid-19 on European business: The risks of de-globalization and the promises of regionalization. R. Coeurderoy & X. Yang
Faculty or entity
CLSM


Programmes / formations proposant cette unité d'enseignement (UE)

Title of the programme
Sigle
Credits
Prerequisites
Learning outcomes
Master [120] : Business Engineering
INGE2M
5
Master [120] in Management
GEST2M
5