This course will enhance your understanding of how to develop scalable ideas inside established organizations, how to take those ideas to market and how to convince established organizations to integrate or invest in your idea. Through this half semester EC, you will learn how to innovate within and how to partner with established organizations. We will cover how to: generate ideas; test and refine ideas; evaluate and select projects under resource constraints, persuade others to support your ideas and how to scale ideas into viable businesses consistently over time. We will also cover how strategic organizations partner and fund ideas through corporate venture funds and alliances. About half of the sessions will use cases to explore relevant topics and the remainder will feature “lab” style classes, where you will learn about a methodology to develop ideas into commercial businesses. You will put those methods to work in class.

What are the educational objectives of the course?

• Help you learn the process of developing ideas into viable, commercial business opportunities, a process you may be charged with contributing to immediately after graduation as product managers, consultants, designers, or members of new business or strategy teams or if developing a startup aiming for large strategic companies as clients or potential investors.
• Learn a methodology involving fieldwork and archival analysis to evaluate, test and refine ideas and build them into scalable innovations.
• Understand how to build a product portfolio, and a capability for innovating serially over time.
• Understand how innovation unfolds within large and established organizations to either work within or partner with such organizations.

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