Course 2021-2022 a.y.

Despite the increasing relevance of innovation strategies and new product development, few companies seem to have mastered their ability to identify, create, and exploit opportunities for innovation on a systematic basis. Crafting and delivering a new product is not an easy and intuitive process, but the result of a set of structured and organized practices. This course aims at exploring these practices and at exploiting the tools and techniques that can be used to this purpose. The New Product Development and Open Innovation course is organized in two main parts.

1. The first provides a set of integrated frameworks and tools to effectively design and manage the strategies, processes, and techniques for innovation. It provides the conceptual tools to understand the nature and characteristics of different types of innovation, as well as practical insights on how to design and manage a new product development process.
2. The second part of the course is focused on how digital environments can help companies to open their boundaries and pursue processes of open and collaborative innovation, involving several external partners in their new product development activities. Special attention is paid to the role of users in enhancing innovation and to ad-hoc mechanisms supporting their active involvement, among which user communities, virtual knowledge brokers, and Open Source Systems.

• Understand new sources of value creation in a systematic manner through innovation, managing the growth in new markets and in existing businesses.
• Understand how to organize a new product development process and the different roles of the functions involved.
• Analyse the opportunities arising from the collaboration with the external players (customer, suppliers, supply network) at the different stages of the process (idea generation, technology development and introduction on the market).

• Understand and apply new product development techniques specifically focused on customer-driven innovation.
• Formulate a plan to improve the innovation process of a selected company thanks to external sources of innovation, distributed and collaborative innovation.

• Online lectures
• Exercises (exercises, database, software etc.)
• Case studies /Incidents (traditional, online)
• Group assignments
• Interactive class activities (role playing, business game, simulation, online forum, instant polls)

• Classes will be mainly synchronous in order to stimulate active participation and clarify any doubt about the topics discussed. Few classes have been planned as asynchronous, covering some basic elements that students can understand autonomously.
• The exercises allows students to immediately apply the theory in a real case, in order to improve products or services based on the voice of (target) customers. it is based on ad hoc excel file and it requires a short group presentation in class.
• Case studies and examples provide real case applications of the topics discusses in class, illustrated by the instructor or discussed directly by the students (instructions are provided in class).
• The final group project provides an opportunity to apply course concepts to a selected company and to perform an in-depth analysis of new product development and open innovation issues. The group project is developed in the second part of the course, partially in class in order to be tutored by the instructor, and is presented in class the last day of the course. 

The final grade is composed by:

1. Individual written examination (70% of the grade).
   • The individual written examination is closed-books and it consists of multiple choice questions and some short essay questions. There are partial  and final exams. Multiple choices questions assess the knowledge of the key concepts explained during the course. Short essay questions evaluate the capability to summarize theorethical models an propose actions to a described specific situation.
2. Group work project (30% of the grade).
   • The group work project evaluate the capability to apply and clearly communicate with the appropriate language the concepts learnt during the course to a specific selected case study.
3. Up to 1,5 additional points on the base of class participation.
   • Individual class participation is assessed during the entire course and could add up to 1,5 point to the final grade of the individual exam, as follows: outstanding contribution (1,5: at most three students), good (1), average (0,5), poor (0,0).

The final grade is 100% based on an individual written examination. The individual written examination is closed-books and it consists of multiple choice questions and some short essay questions. There are only general exams (no partial). Multiple choices questions  assess the knowledge of the key concepts explained during the course. Short essay questions evaluate the capability to summarize theorethical models an propose actions to a described specific situation.

• Articles and textbook are available in digital format on Course reserve or (especially for HBR articles) directly in http://lib.unibocconi.it/ > Databases > Business and Management > Business Source Complete).
• Slideset and articles available on course reserve (see the detailed syllabus in the Bboard platform).
• E. PRANDELLI, M. SAWHNEY, G. VERONA, Collaborating with Customers to Innovate, Edward Elgar, 2008 (selected chapters, see detailed syllabus).

• Articles and textbook are available in digital format on Course reserve or (especially for HBR articles) directly in http://lib.unibocconi.it/ > Databases > Business and Management > Business Source Complete).
• Slideset and articles available on course reserve (see the detailed syllabus in the blackboard platform).
• E. PRANDELLI, M. SAWHNEY, G. VERONA, Collaborating with Customers to Innovate, Edward Elgar, 2008 (entire book).