College of Business & Economics 100
COBE 100: Innovation in Action
Prerequisites: None
Credit Hours: (3)
Fueled by collaboration, curiosity and interactive hands-on games and exercises, students will discover and exercise all stages of the innovation process as well as the skills and mindsets necessary to fulfill their innovation potential. It is a safe space where students are encouraged to take risks as they navigate new challenges. Students will identify and solve innovation challenges and learn how to survive the srapes, stumbles and setbacks that are a certainty in any innovative environment.
Detailed Description of Course
Five modules will provide an overarching structure to the course. These modules include:
1) Understanding Innovation: to include definitions, impact, student competency assessment, and history and role of innovation in economics.
2) Recognizing Opportunities: the first step in the innovation sequence where students learn to use creative, systematic processes to identify opportunities for innovation.
3) Exploring Solutions: where possible innovative ideas are developed, assessed, honed, and tested.
4) Determining feasibility: using prototypes and other assessment tools to evaluate the feasibility of possible ideas.
5) Exploiting Innovations: the use of business canvases and other tools to explore the viability of using innovations to develop or ehance value and competitive advantage.
Detailed Description of Conduct of Course
The domain for this course will be the Innovation Process. Students will actively learn the skills/processes required for successful innovation through intrinsically motivating active learning. Instructors will use six different types of play - pretend, exploratory, constructive, dramatic, physical and imaginative to help motivate students and teach creativity and innovation. Everything in the course - From the material delivery and type of instruction to the tone and atmosphere - will be guided by the goal of making innovation play not work. Core concepts will be adapted into business-relevant games, both online and in the classroom. Games will vary in their degree of competitiveness, flexibility of thought required, time constraint and teamwork required to provide students with a diverse set of experiences. The course wil be team taught and a relaxed work environment will be maintained through "coffee house" style chats between the cross-disciplinary faculties. For example, instead of direct lecture, students may witness and take part in a "discussion" between economic, management, and marketing faculty regarding the role of innovation in society. Instead of traditional lectures, short workshops, hands on learning exercises, and faculty as consultants and mentors will be utilized. The course will be offered in a hybrid format, using online tools and outside assignments to accomplish part of the objectives, with face to face meetings for discussion, presentations, and other elements.
Student Goals and Objectives of the Course
Upon successful completion of the course students will be able to:
1) Identify processes that enhance innovation competencies
a. Differentiate and explain different types of innovation and play;
b. Recognize the skills and competencies required for successful innovation;
c. Evaluate their personal performance on those skills and competencies;
d. Recognize and explain the role and value of innovation and play in the local and global economy;
2) Apply innovation process tools to actual innovation challenges
a. Find novel innovation opportunities that present themselves in everyday life;
b. Identify and administer appropriate creative processes and tools to help solve innovation problems;
3) Derive recommended courses of action based on innovative solutions
a. Identify and design appropriate processes to test, evaluate, and refine innovation solutions;
b. Devise a viable pathway through which the pursuit and execution of a chosen path creates value
c. Determine how the value created by an innovation can be used to develop or enhance a business model.
Assessment Measures
Assesment will be based upon the extent to which the student achieves the stated goals and objectives. To be measured at the individual level are the extent to which the student fully participates in course activities, the quality and quantity of ideas created and explored, the breadth of evaluation and testing of opportunities, and the ability to understand and present a viable pathway to innovation success.
Other Course Information
We believe our playful, hands-on approach to teaching the serious business of innovation will help bring business to life in Millenials in ways that are fresh, exciting and relevant and will challenge any business stereotypes they might harbor. In our course students will be following in the footsteps of some of the most innovative companies and individuals in the world. As thomas Edison Famously said: "I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun."
Review and Approval
December 6, 2016