Course Vision

Nowadays, it’s impossible to be a leader without thinking innovative, i.e. without the capability to lead organizations in an ever-changing context, where organizations have undefined and dynamics profiles.

Viceversa, nowadays, it’s impossible to drive innovation without leadership skills, i.e. without the capability to envision strategic directions, engage others, find resources, and implement the vision.

In short, nowadays leadership and innovation walk together. This link is further reinforced when thinking to the challenge of sustainable development of business and society, which is the ability to grow without compromising the availability of resources for future generations. In this course, we integrate these two themes that in traditional schools of management are addressed separately. The course is a unique journey, aimed at developing capabilities and skills to be effective leaders who promote sustainable innovation.

The goal is to focus on two, interrelated dimensions: (1) a focus on you as a person (how to be an innovative leader) (2) and a focus on social and organizational relations (how to nurture an organization and an environment that creates innovations).

The main educational process is thought for students who will actively participate in class and who will engage in team-works. The course allows students who are not able or willing to provide this form of active participation an alternative educational process (not involving team projects, but only individual projects).

Course Objectives

To enable students to:

- understand their role as leaders in society and business

- increase their self-awareness, and focus their motivation and vision about their development as leaders

- understand the role of leaders in managing and guiding interpersonal processes

- understand a changing socio-economic context and the challenges of sustainability, capture the opportunities, identify possible innovative directions for them and their organization

- understand the dynamics of innovation processes within and across organizations

- understand the dynamics of creativity and change in organizations, from the collaboration in small settings (team building, team-working), to collaborative innovation in complex networks

Course content

The key topics that will be covered in the course are the following, divided in the two main areas:

Innovation

In this module you will learn how to promote and mange innovation with a strategic perspective, as well a show to manage and lead an innovation process. The module focuses especially on the capabilities of leaders to create innovative visions and to catalyze the resources that are needed to make that vision come through and all the phases, activities and methodologies needed to transform and idea into a product-service solution to be launched in the market. The topics characterizing the module are the following:

o   What is innovation, what is its value and its challenges;

o   The drivers and the timing of innovation;

o   The innovation strategies and the creation of vision: innovation of meaning and design-driven innovation;

o   Technology strategy: key technologies, dynamic capabilities, complementary assets, profiting from innovation;

o   Collaborative and Open Innovation;

o   Guiding principles and models for managing innovation processes;

o   Users analysis and users integration in innovation processes.

Leadership

In this module you will learn how to develop the capabilities to engage yourself and others in becoming innovative leaders and effectively managing change and innovation in organizational settings. The topics characterizing the module are the following ones:

o   What is leadership, what is the difference between leaders and managers;

o   How to assess people and effectively communicate with collaborators;

o   The motivational theories that help leaders to trigger others’ commitment;

o   How to foster creativity for concept development: creative leaders, individual, team and organizational creativity;

o   How to design and lead effective teams; teams roles and dynamics in innovation processes;

o   Team dynamics: group behaviours, group decision making, conflicts and negotiation;

o   How to effectively face change and lead innovation in complex organisational settings.

The course blends a theoretical and an applied approach. On the one hand it provides the frameworks and methods about the strategies, processes, and behaviors -at individual, group, company and network level – that are aligned with an innovative setting and strategy. On the other hand the students will practice individually and in teams the abilities to become effective leaders in innovative environments, through an experiential teaching approach.

Evaluation will be based on the two different options in which the course can be followed:

Team-based option:

o   Individual written exam

o   Project work: the goal is to understand how to design and implement innovation, working on a brief provided by a real company 

o   Optional - Leadership story: description of the profile and the journey of an innovative leader, her/his peculiar personality, capabilities, behaviors in different situations

Individual-based option:

o   Individual written exam

o   Individual assignments:

• Leadership story: description of the profile and the journey of an innovative leader, her/his peculiar personality, capabilities, behaviors in different situations. The final output of the leadership story consist in a video and a written report
• Critical analysis of a real case study: analysis of a real innovation case, in order to show the criticism capability throughout the application of leadership and innovation topics

Participation in the activities of the course will be evaluated as well in terms of contribution to the work of teams and to the discussions in class, through a bonus/malus mechanism. Students who will reach a specific threshold in the written exam will be allowed to take an optional oral exam to improve their grade.