Handbook

Organisations are continually striving to develop their innovation capabilities, skills and culture. This is because it is thought that a capacity to innovate will enable individuals to think distinctively, creatively and critically in a business environment, thereby improving outcomes whether it is sustainable competitive advantage or increased public value.

However, it is well known that organisations face challenges in successfully developing, supporting and institutionalising innovation practices because the usual requirements of administrative management in established corporations such as risk management and fast short term deadlines lead to different priorities. Consequently the focus of the course is to teach innovation as finding solutions to complex problem in organisational settings.

Some companies try to set their new initiatives, be the new external ventures or new ways of working internally, apart from the old to avoid conflicts in management requirements. However, this this only partially solves the problem and so, in this course it will be explained how developing innovation as an individual, as well as organisational, capability can actually reduce risk and increase effectiveness. Students will learn that innovation can be learnt and supported through a systems of processes and support.

This course aims to equip students with an awareness of the role, impact and challenges of innovation within an organisation.  The importance of innovation for all aspects of organisational effectiveness, not just new products or services, will be stressed. This will support students as they develop strategies across a broad range of topics and disciplines.

This course will examine definitions of innovation, the importance of innovation in creating competitive advantage, how organisational leaders can support innovation and an innovation culture. Content will include: what is entrepreneurial management and how it addresses the challenges of needing to embrace uncertainty; how to create, sustain and transfer knowledge creation; differences between radical and incremental innovation, managing competing agendas within constrained resources and the role of human capital and its application to new ideas technologies. 

The Learning Outcomes will be:

• To understand the role of innovation in organisational success
• To be cognisant of the challenges in supporting innovation and be able to develop strategies to overcome these
• To apply different theories of innovation in a range of contexts to create more effective outcomes
• To implement organisational innovation processes