Business Innovation - Emilio Bellini - a.a. 2016/2017

 1. Introduction

Design has increasingly become a major competitive weapon in today’s competition. An increasing number of firms in fact have recognized the importance of design and design driven innovation as a mean to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Firms are also recognizing that in today’s business dynamics, where innovation has become the basic rule of competition, the core capability of managers is their attitude to activate and master the processes of innovation. Strategic thinking, vision creation, generation and management of innovation in highly uncertain environments, integration of networks of internal and external resources, teamworking, creativity, and leadership, are the core skills of tomorrow’s top designers and managers.

 1.1. Objectives

Participants to the Business Innovation course will develop a specific sensibility and capability to manage design driven innovation. More specifically they will become designers who:

–        Define strategies where design is a source of competitive advantage;

–        Are capable to understand both technological trends, explicit and latent user needs, and socio-cultural trends, together with a capability to interpret competitive dynamics in industries;

–        Generate and develop visions that are based on a deep understanding of the future dynamics of: competition, society, and technology;

–        Define marketing strategies that are appropriate for design driven innovations;

–        Define technology strategies that sustain design driven innovation with a strong and inimitable technological competence;

–        Manage innovation processes and projects, where design is a source of innovation;

–        Create organizational environments that foster creativity and learning;

–        Are capable to manage a firm as a crucial node within a network, by leveraging on both internal and external resources, exchanging knowledge and defining partnerships with multiple actors;

–        Have a special attitude to management in design intensive industries.

 1.2. Main contents

The course is composed by three parts:

Part 1 – Innovation Strategy and Innovation Process: innovation and competitive advantage; approaches to innovation: technology push, market pull (user centered design), design push (design-driven innovation) innovating business models, design-driven process and the Interpreters, organizing the new service-product development process.

Part 2 – New Service Concept Development: Concept Statement; R&D, Ideas and New Concepts; Lead User Analysis.

Part 3 – Project Work: Designing New Meanings of a Service.

 1.3. Professor

Emilio Bellini, 4091, emilio.bellini@polimi.it

Assistant: Giuseppe Pinto, pintogiuseppeleo@gmail.com

 1.4. Timing and room

Tuesday morning: 08.15-12.15 – Aula TBD (08.30 - 10.15 + 10.30 - 12.00)

[Few lectures will be organized in TBD, see Section 2]

 2. Rules

Coherently with its objectives, the course is organized around two main activities: lectures and projects. Specifically, projects will be developed by teams identified since the beginning of the course.

 2.1. Lectures

Each lecture faces a specific topic and is particularly interactive to the point that also the participation will partially influence the final evaluation. In order to facilitate the assessment of the students' participation each Team of Students (from 4 to 6 members) has to send before October, the 13th (to emilio.bellini@polimi.it and pintogiuseppeleo@gmail.com) the following information:

–        Photo + Name Tags

–        List of Students with ID Number (matricola), Name and Surname;

–        Name of the Group Leader (responsible for communication with all the members) + email

 2.2. Projects

During the course student teams will develop projects adopting the Design Driven approach in collaboration with an industrial partner. Projects will be developed through three different kinds of activities:

-    the cultural insight capture phase will be supervised by the professors and managed autonomously by the teams during visits in stores and cultural sites (end of October-beginning of November)

-    the scenario building phase will be managed during the Enlightening Workshop (end of November-beginning of December). The workshop will be organized and managed by the Professors;

–        the concept development phase will be managed during the Team Working Sessions (end of December-beginning of January). These sessions will be managed autonomously by the teams; Professors will be present as usual lecture and can support the teams. In other words these sessions can be interpreted as design reviews.

Student teams will present their concepts on January, the 26^th during the final oral exam. Student teams have to send before the project report (maximum 10.000 words) adopting the following agenda:

PART A: INNOVATION STRATEGY AND SCENARIO BUILDING

• State of the Art of Innovation in the business context (technology, customer experience meaning)
• Competitive analysis of the industry in which the innovation has been launched (comparative analysis between the innovative company and the competitors)
• Cultural Insight Capture: Shift of Cultural Models and Shift of Meanings
• Small synthesis about the Enlightening Workshop
• Description of the scenarios developed during the Enlightening Workshop: Technology, Customer Experience and Meaning

PART B: CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

• Interpreters and the Shift of Meaning
• Lead users and the context of use
• The concept: embodying the new meaning, experience, technology
• Uniqueness (why your product is better than those of competitors)
• Explaining the concept: metaphors, storyboard, billboard, moodboard, etc.
• Service-Product features: functions, customer journey

 3. Didactic materials

 Materials

The didactic material is composed by:

-                 slides from lectures

-                 readings

-                 case studies

-                 videos

-                 project work documents (brief, templates, review, etc.)

 The framework of materials will be updated after each lecture on:

• http://beep.metid.polimi.it/

4. Textbooks

–        Schilling MA (2010). Strategic Management of Technological Innovation. McGraw-Hill (Third Edition) [S];

–        Verganti R (2009). Design-Driven Innovation. Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean. Harvard Business Press, Boston [V].

–        Crawford M and Di Benedetto A (2011). New Products Management. McGraw-Hill (Tenth Edition) [CDB];

2.3. Written exam

The written exams will be composed by open questions and small case studies. The written exam is scheduled for January, the 19th.

2.4. Evaluation criteria

Final marks will be obtained according to the following criteria:

- Lectures: Class participation that will be related to the student's participation during the lectures and the the design reviews (each team will receive a unique mark)

(class attendance; proactive class participation; quality/not quantity of questions/answers, quality of case discussion)

- Project Work: Official Reviews and Final Report (each team will receive a unique mark)

(Intermediate Reviews and Final Report: Completeness, Correctness, Creativity, Readability)

- Final Individual Performance (each student will receive a unique mark)

(written test and oral discussion of course subjects and project delivery. The oral discussion will involve each group, with specific questions to the single members)

Class participation and project presentation marks will be kept valid until last a.a. session (February 2017)

Other Information For No Class-based Students (Single Project Work)

Evaluation:

A) Project presentation

Students need to define with professor a proposal/request of Project Work on development of a concept for new services/new products.

Evaluation of Project will be based on quality of project delivery:

•Completeness

•Correctness

•Creativity

•Written presentation

B) Final exam:

•Written Test and Oral discussion of course subjects and project delivery