Course 2024-2025 a.y.

The course is structured around three main pedagogical approaches:

• Theoretical foundation. This approach aims to set the main pillars of sustainable oriented innovation and design paradigms as Design Thinking, Design Thinking for circular solutions, Frugal Innovation, User Centered Design and Social Innovation.
• Case analysis. Through various testimonies of managers and entrepreneurs, real case studies of companies and startups that have developed sustainable oriented innovations, the source of their competitive advantage will be illustrated.
• Project work. The students will be challenged by a company brief to apply constructs, tools and processes to redesign the company’s values, business model, product-service, user engagement, revenues/cost structure, channel and retailers, ecosystem) in a more circular and sustainable way.

• Identify the main types of, and approaches to different sustainability oriented innovation and design.
• Interpret the societal and technology changes to be leveraged by companies in order to implement a sustainable and circular innovation and design approach.
• Grasp the systemic and holistic dimensions of the sustainability oriented innovation and design applied by real business.

• Apply principles and tools to design new sustainable solutions and business models.
• Manage the entire process of sustainability oriented innovation from the vision generation to the pre-competitive analysis.
• Assess the impact of the new solutions/business models according to the more relevant sustainability dimensions.

• Lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Practical Exercises
• Individual works / Assignments
• Collaborative Works / Assignments

The course will be taught through: 

• Face-to-face lectures on theoretical concepts and approaches towards sustainable innovation.
• Guest speaker’s talks on their direct experiences on the main issues they faced when dealing with entrepreneurship and sustainability.
• Case study analysis to identify theoretical concepts from real-life situations. Students are expected to read the assigned cases and materials before the related sessions to engage in an active in-class discussion.
• Project development with intermediate and final review moments. The classes will be held in-presence in the assigned classrooms on the Bovisa campus. Students are strongly encouraged to attend in-presence classes.

In order to achieve the learning outcomes and measure their acquisition by students:

• Class attendance is strongly recommended; students are expected to actively participate to the case discussion. This aims to test the student’s ability to interact and think critically, applying the concepts presented throughout the course. Active participation will not be formally evaluated but will constitute the basis for the individual assessment in the final exam.
• An oral exam to critically discuss the theoretical concepts will be held. The individual assessment based on the oral exam accounts for the 50% of the final grade.
• A project work will be developed to assess the ability to apply constructs and design tools and to manage the overall design/innovation process to design/redesign a new solutions/business models characterized by higher sustainability and circularity degrees. The project work accounts for 50% of the final grade. A bonus/malus on the evaluation of the team project will be assigned to each team member on the basis of extra-participation or free riding, evaluated by the faculty by taking into consideration the peer assessment and the participation during the reviews and final presentations. 

For students who are not participating in the project work and/or are not participating in class, the evaluation will be based on a final written and oral exam. The exam probes the student’s understanding of the concepts inherent to sustainability oriented innovation and design and the student’s ability to critically apply the main tools to specific cases that aim to change their solutions/business models toward a more sustainable and circular approach.

The materials of the course consist of:

• Course Slides.
• Cases on library course reserve.
• Collection of articles.
• Template and canvas for Project work development.

Suggested reading: 

• Bocken, N., Ritala, P., Albareda, L., & Verburg, R. (Eds.). (2019). Innovation for Sustainability: Business Transformations Towards a Better World. Springer.
• Lüdeke-Freund, F., Breuer, H., & Massa, L. (2022). Sustainable Business Model Design - 45 Patterns.
• Ceschin, F., and Gaziulusoy, I. Design for sustainability: a multi-level framework from products to socio-technical systems. Routledge, 2019.