INNO9003 Collaboration, Co-Creation & The Crowd: Leveraging & Managing your Ecosystem for Innovation GE

• 3 x Full day intensive workshop immersions and
• 1 x full day application workshop

Technology-enabled networks increasingly permeate and connect businesses, individual, political, financial and social circles, whilst technical, social and financial challenges have become larger and more complex. These factors place a premium on the ability to collaborate across boundaries, to harness networks and open innovation ecosystems and co-create solutions to the world's increasingly complex, "wicked" problems. Students will explore the challenges and opportunities posed by the confluence of digital community, expanding data gathering and analytics, technological change and evolving business models. This highly experiential and challenge-led topic is designed to advance students' capacity to leverage networks, data and open innovation models to create competitive advantage, improve society, and disrupt markets. Students will read the latest literature, follow online business and technology blogs, analyse industry and organisational events in real time, and apply crowd and open innovation techniques to tackling a current challenge for a start-up or existing firm, governmental office or organisation.

This topic aims to develop students capable of navigating and creating opportunities from the evolving and intertwined nature of technology and industry convergence, digitally connected users and markets and open and disruptive innovation models. More specifically, students will explore current topics and theories including: the crowdsourcing of innovation in established firms and new entrants; the use of technological connectedness and social media strategies in developing innovative user communities; the challenges and opportunities of co-creation; the emergence of crowd-based funding as a financial tool for launching new projects; innovative organizational structures and processes for managing open innovation; and the management of crowd-based collaboration and innovation.The topic blends evolving theory and practice, discussion and the practical application of crowd-sourcing, open-innovation theory and techniques to real-time challenges and opportunities in current contexts.

1. Describe and use a number of open-innovation and crowd-sourcing techniques
2. Describe and evaluate the usefulness of various management techniques and structures for organising open-innovation and crowd-sourcing initiatives
3. Demonstrate mastery of concepts and techniques by applying them to a team-based, open innovation or crowd sourcing project for a start-up or existing firm, governmental office or organisation
4. Measure and evaluate the effectiveness of the open-ended or crowd-sourcing project