20494 - INNOVATION AND FIRM STRATEGIES IN ICT SECTORS

No formal prerequisites.

The course provides students with an overview of the innovation and strategic management issues raised by the production and use of advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) and services. In particular, it aims at analysing the technological, economic and managerial aspects of the ICT sectors. More in detail, it investigates the development of innovative platforms, products and services in different ICT contexts and examines the strategies of different types of firms – incumbents and new entrants, network companies, platform developers, application providers. The course adopts a micro-level perspective, investigating the implication of technical change for the competition among incumbent firms and for the entry of new firms in the market. Furthermore, it provides insights on the impact of new technologies for the emergence of new and profitable opportunities for creating value added contents for the final users.

• Platforms and network effects.
• Competition through standard setting.
• Platform and innovation.
• Competition between and within platforms.
• ICTs as two sided markets.
• Pricing strategies in two sided markets.
• Pricing strateges and net neutrality.

• Recognize the importance of ICT in the economy.
• Identify the characteristics of ICT ecosystems as opposed to traditional sectors.
• Discuss the features of innovation strategies in ICT the light of the different approaches developed by the literature.
• Acknowledge the differences across ICT platforms in terms of types of competitors, users, modes of innovation.

• Apply the basic terminology necessary to discuss, in a consistent and precise manner, market structures, firms’ strategies, and performance in ICT sectors.
• Analyse how firms compete and elaborate strategies in the digital economy.
• Identify specificities in the sources of competitiveness and their consequences for firms’ performance in ICT contexts.
• Apply research tools to the analysis of real-life firms, markets and industries in ICT.
• Show teamwork ablities and presentations/communications skills.

• Face-to-face lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Group assignments

The group assignment consist in a 30 minutes presentation of an academic paper. The paper is about the case or history of a specific ICT product/service/platform/company. The aim of the assignment is to analyse the paper using the framework developed in class to investigate the technological characteristics, the competitive landscape and the firms' strategies as well as the evolution of the market.

In order to evaluate the acquistions of the above-mentioned outcomes, the assessment procedure involves:

1. 1/3 group work (oral presentation).
2. 2/3 written exam. The exam consists of four questions (two guided and two open). Attending students are requested to answer one question of each type (i.e. one guided and one open). That is to say they can choose which questions to answer. The exam lasts 45 minutes max.

Only lecture notes are compulsory readings for attending students. The attendance is measured withe the "Attendance" procedure. In order to take the exam as attending student, an attendance are equal or higher than 75% must be reported.

Not attending student is assessed on the basis of a written exam only. The exam consists of four questions (two guided questions and two open questions). Students are expected to answer all the questions. The exam lasts 1 hour and 30 minutes. Both lecture notes and papers are compulsory readings for the written exam of not attending students.

A detailed reading list is communicated before the begining of the course in the Syllabus.

A detailed reading list is communicated before the begining of the course in the Syllabus.