Open Innovation & Software Economics (2235.YR.015810.1)

General information

Type:	OPT	Curs:	1	Period:	S semester
ECTS Credits:	3 ECTS

Teaching Staff:

Group	Teacher	Department	Language
Year 1	Maha Ahmed Shaikh	Operaciones, Innovación y Data Sciences	ENG

Students will be assessed on their engaged class participation throughout the course. Group presentations will run three quarters of the way through the course. Students will be expected to submit their individual essay two weeks after the course ends.

Companies understand the need to look for talent, creativity and ideas beyond their organizational boundaries because no one company can hire all the talented people that exist. This forces companies to find a novel way to bring external ideas back into their own company so that they alone can capture value. This course will cover the different ways a company sources innovative ideas and takes them to market.

We will cover crowdsourcing, inner sourcing, open-sourcing, crowdfunding and how companies harness collective intelligence effectively. Each type of open innovation - ie crowdsourcing, inner sourcing and so forth, will be studied in depth and compared with other types of open innovation.

While each of the different types of open innovation have their strengths they each also create new challenges for companies. We will take a critical look at each type of open innovation and question how effective it is to find solutions for problems faced by companies. Drawing on theories of innovation we will analyze how value creation is balanced with value capture.

This course will critically investigate innovation and consider how understanding of innovation changes in relation to available technologies of production. The course material is relevant to any student considering a career in business or entrepreneurship in which technology plays a central role. The module will equip students with the basic knowledge to develop and implement digital innovation initiatives and to critically analyze existing innovation strategies. The ethics of digital innovation will also be explored, particularly as these come into dialogue with technology-facilitated transformations in contemporary work and consumption practices.

Segment I - Foundations
- Defining and understanding open innovation
- Theories of innovation
- Value creation and value capture

Segment II - Types
- Open-sourcing
- Inner sourcing
- Crowdsourcing
- Crowdfunding

Segment III - Comparing and Critiquing
- Choosing the right sourcing for a problem
- Understanding the drawbacks of each type
- Managing open innovation over time

Benkler, Y. 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Chesbrough, H. W. (2003). Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology. Harvard Business School Press.
Chesbrough, H., Vanhaverbeke, W., & West, J. (2006). Open innovation: Researching a new paradigm. Oxford University Press.

Group	Teacher	Department
Year 1	Maha Ahmed Shaikh	Operaciones, Innovación y Data Sciences