The module Strategy & Innovation consists of a lecture and a case study seminar. Attending the lecture without the seminar is not possible. The lecture builds the foundation for the seminar and only the seminar participation will be graded.

The module will take place face-to-face. There won't be any option to participate remotely. Registration for the course, see below.

Lecture & case study seminar: 9 ECTS

Dates:

Content

Over the past years, research at the intersection of innovation and strategy has highlighted that the innovation capability of firms is crucial to firms’ long-term survival. This lecture series looks at firms’ strategies particularly from an innovation viewpoint, including aspects evolving around R&D, corporate entrepreneurship, IP management, IP strategy, industry lifecycles, industry evolution, etc. It also deepens students’ knowledge on the very basics of strategy analysis, development, and implementation.

The course draws on findings from a number of academic disciplines, especially economics, organization theory, sociology, and management policy to build a fundamental understanding of how and why some firms achieve and sustain superior performance, especially regarding innovation as a crucial aspect of firms’ long-term strategy.

In the case study seminar students will use their acquired knowledge for discussing and solving case studies connected to the lecture’s content.

The seminar will be organized as an MBA case discussion class. It is essential that students read the assigned material and that they prepare the Class Preparation Questions before coming to class. Class participation will be a significant part of the grade for this course. Additional assignments will be mandatory but not be graded.

The course is organized into a number of modules, which are described below:

1. Introduction – This module introduces the course structure, content, and requirements. The first sessions emphasize the norms of class participation and active debate that are the cornerstones of learning in the course.
2. Introduction to theories – This module gives an introduction into the four most relevant theories in strategy. The institution-based view of the firm highlights how formal and informal institutions influence and enable different firm- and industry-level strategies. The industry-based view analyzes sources of differences in profitability between industries. Porter’s five forces framework is the central approach of this view. The resource-based view focusses the sources of differences in profitability within industries. We explore the ways in which some firms achieve competitive advantage, which is defined as performance above the industry average. Finally, we will get to know the theory on dynamic capabilities and learn, how firms can constantly renew their resources to stay competitive
3. Innovation – In this module we will look at innovation as a source of industry evolution and learn how firms, especially incumbents can remain competitive despite fast-changing environmental circumstances. Moreover, we will learn how firms can be innovative and focus especially on the opposite driving forces of exploration and exploitation. Further important topics of this module comprise the management of innovation and intellectual property rights (IPR) and IPR strategy.
4. Corporate entrepreneurship – In this module we shift the focus of the course away from business unit analysis and onto the decisions at the corporate level for multi-business-unit firms. We will especially examine how large firms and incumbents in markets can stay innovative despite facing organizational inertia. Venture capital, organizing for innovation and alternative approaches to corporate venturing will be important topics.

Registration

Registration is open on Alma. Students without an Alma access will not be able to register. Please contact the technical support if you encounter any technical problems, not the lecturer. Please read through the information on Alma carefully and then register for the seminar group. In the first session, we will discuss the allocation of students into the two different groups and try to accomodate for students' different scheduling needs. All organizational issues will be dealt with in the first session. Do not contact the lecturer before this session. Emails with organizational inquiries or inquiries regarding registration will not be answered.

Registration for the seminar ends Oct 17^th.

PhD students and Master degree candidates of the research group Strategy & Management can post questions about statistics and its implementation in R in an internal discussion forum on ILIAS. These are then tackled and solved together on a regular basis under the guiadance of Timo.
The purpose is to solve and discuss relevant and research-specific problems together in order to learn form each other and increase the expertise in R of everyone involved. The skills gained by means of the discussion group are not only relevant for research projects of the research group but can also prove to be useful outside of university. This way, PhD students as well as Master degree candidates can profit from participating in the discussion.

Please send questions on this course to Timo Bader.