Corporate Innovation (INNO)

INNO 1990. Elective. (1-4 Hours)

Offers elective credit for courses taken at other academic institutions. May be repeated without limit.

INNO 2206. Global Social Enterprise. (4 Hours)

Designed to provide students with an in-depth exposure to entrepreneurship in the social sector, a rapidly growing segment of the global economy. Uses the case method to expose students to leading entrepreneurs who have developed and implemented business models to solve social problems such as extreme poverty, disease, illiteracy, and economic and social dislocation. Focuses on uniquely creative and driven people who have dedicated their lives to making a difference in the lives of others through values-based entrepreneurship.

INNO 2301. Innovation!. (4 Hours)

Designed for students across the entire University who wish to learn about innovation—the creative process, the different types of innovation, how innovations are created, and how innovations can be transformed into commercial reality either as new products or new services and either in startups, existing corporations, and nonprofit entities. Offers students an opportunity to obtain the fundamental insight needed to understand the innovation process and to become a player in it.

Attribute(s): NUpath Creative Express/Innov

INNO 2304. Industry Disruption and Corporate Transformation. (4 Hours)

Offers students an opportunity to learn several interrelated frameworks, concepts, and the language necessary to understand and analyze the origin and implications of industry disruptions and the difficulties experienced by incumbent firms as they seek to respond to the changes. Geared toward students who want to become innovation leaders in established companies and lead projects to create and launch new products or services, as well as students who plan to start their own businesses, particularly in high-technology sectors.

INNO 2414. Social Responsibility of Business in an Age of Inequality. (4 Hours)

Studies how businesses can be agents for social good, both locally and around the world. In an era of growing social and economic inequality both in the United States and globally, many “enlightened” businesses are reconsidering their roles in creating opportunity for disadvantaged or marginalized people and communities. Focuses on businesses that have the resources to invest in innovative social responsibility programs that address the impact of rising social and economic inequality. Considers the tension between the single-minded notion of maximizing profit for investors and serving a broader stakeholder community. The role of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking plays a key role in student learning. This is an integrative course that includes areas such as business policy, governance, strategy, and decision making.

INNO 2990. Elective. (1-4 Hours)

Offers elective credit for courses taken at other academic institutions. May be repeated without limit.

INNO 3308. Business Economic History of South Africa. (4 Hours)

Covers the economic history of modern South Africa through lectures from faculty at the partner university in South Africa and also from the Northeastern professor. Includes the country’s transition from apartheid to its present economic and political situation. Offers an opportunity to learn how South Africa has managed to overcome the struggles of its recent past and become one of the leading emerging economies of the world with a flourishing business community. Includes readings in and study of modern South African economics, law, history, politics, and culture.

Attribute(s): NUpath Societies/Institutions

INNO 3335. Product Innovation and Portfolio Management. (4 Hours)

Covers the intersection of project management, product development, and product portfolio management. Focuses on how large corporations develop, manage, and commercialize new products and services. Explores the unique attributes of different industries, such as internet platform-based firms, service-based firms, traditional manufacturing firms, and healthcare.

INNO 3520. Impact Investing and Social Finance. (4 Hours)

Explores impact investing, a transformative way to work with money to achieve a more inclusive and sustainable economy. Large investors are entering the world of impact investing, a rapidly emerging space where social and ecological effects of finance are championed over maximizing shareholder value. New investment vehicles such as social impact bonds and Web exchanges are changing the role of financing institutions to better serve the needs of low-income populations around the world. Applies interdisciplinary frameworks, tools, and cases, with hands-on teamwork and guest speakers, to critically examine the field. Offers students an opportunity to learn to develop and test concepts that integrate social responsibility, sustainability, and mutual accountability into current financial and economic systems while expanding social capital markets.

INNO 3990. Elective. (1-4 Hours)

Offers elective credit for courses taken at other academic institutions. May be repeated without limit.

INNO 4225. Growth, Acquisitions, and Alliances. (4 Hours)

Analyzes whether, why, and how multibusiness corporations expand their operations into new business areas by questioning decisions to grow organically or through mechanisms such as acquisitions or alliances. Uses rigorous case-based discussions, expert readings, and major current events to discuss issues related to the choice of make, buy, or partner. Evaluates how these different corporate entrepreneurial strategies are used to help firms be more competitive and innovative.

INNO 4504. Integrated Studies in Corporate Innovation. (4 Hours)

Offers students an opportunity to experience corporate innovation in the classroom. Corporate innovation involves an enterprise experimenting with modern practices, technology, strategies, and opportunities to make its existing business model more competitive in the current marketplace. Students, as a class, represent a specific firm and tackle these corporate innovation challenges by adopting a culture that embraces new technology and actively seeks out ways to enhance the firm’s business model. With this proactive approach to corporate innovation, the students can visualize how enterprises can remain agile in the face of rising competition. The goal is to learn how corporations may even identify new opportunities before any startup has a chance to establish itself in the market.

Prerequisite(s): ENTR 2301 with a minimum grade of D- or INNO 2301 with a minimum grade of D-

INNO 4506. Integrated Studies in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. (4 Hours)

Focuses on a single developing region. Offers an opportunity to analyze the role of socially-driven entrepreneurship or “social impact enterprises” (SIEs) in alleviating poverty and its symptoms (for example, disease, illiteracy and chronic unemployment) in that country. Students have an opportunity to study the history, politics, and development of the country, with an emphasis on the role that private-sector initiatives have played and hope to play in addressing widespread poverty and with a focus on the failures and successes in economic and business development, economic growth, and poverty alleviation. Offers students an opportunity to develop a plan for a micro-investment strategy focused on these and/or similar businesses and organizations having a significant social impact in a developing country.

INNO 4990. Elective. (1-4 Hours)

Offers elective credit for courses taken at other academic institutions. May be repeated without limit.

INNO 6200. Enterprise Growth and Innovation. (3 Hours)

Explores the challenges and processes for harnessing technological innovation for new-business development. Integrates technology strategy, innovation in marketing, product development, and organization design for the purpose of enterprise growth. Through readings, cases, and exercises, studies how firms from different industries gain competitive advantage through distinctive products and services, and leverage their technologies and skills into new emerging markets. Also focuses on processes for conceiving, financing, and organizing new ventures.

INNO 6217. Lean Innovation. (3 Hours)

Explores how corporate venturing and entrepreneurial teams can quickly and effectively bring new concepts to market. Demonstrates how small technical teams can quickly investigate opportunity spaces, develop and select concepts, and translate these into prototypes. Other topics include industrial design thinking, project teams, prototyping, and commercialization of design. Explores the challenges and solutions to managing a technology-based product within an established corporation and details frameworks on how innovative projects can be inexpensively tested and deployed within the organization.

INNO 6222. Competing in Dynamic, Innovation-Driven Markets. (3 Hours)

Reviews the key theories and tools needed to understand how technological change creates new markets and prompts new business models, how technology-based firms can outcompete rivals in fast-growing markets characterized by high uncertainty, and how the evolution of technology in an industry affects the type of firm capabilities needed to succeed over time.

INNO 6225. Acquisitions, Alliances, and Growth. (3 Hours)

Offers students an opportunity to analyze whether, why, and how multibusiness corporations expand their operations into new business areas by questioning decisions to grow globally through mechanisms such as acquisitions or alliances. Uses rigorous case-based discussions, expert readings, and major current events to discuss issues related to the choice of make, buy, or partner. Offers students an opportunity to evaluate how these different corporate entrepreneurial strategies are used to help firms be more competitive and innovative.

INNO 6226. Leading Digital Transformation in Organizations. (3 Hours)

Examines how the global economy is being transformed by digital and information technologies. Companies increasingly use these technologies to develop and deliver products and services, interact with customers and stakeholders, operate their businesses more efficiently, and disrupt traditional business models with innovative digital solutions. Analyzes how digital technologies offer established companies opportunities to reduce costs, operate more quickly, and offer customers codesign and coproduction options. Studies how firms adapt to new conditions by adopting information technology and the barriers to entry inherent in every organization.

INNO 6227. Digital Bias in Business. (3 Hours)

Delves into the societal and ethical challenges companies increasingly face as they confront new technologies. Studies the origins of these challenges and explores how firms can address these important ethical and societal issues as they seek competitive advantage in the marketplace. Examines the unintended consequences of past technological advances and how firms, regulators, and society responded to similar issues in the past. Evaluates a range of current issues with new technologies and explores the extent to which lessons from the past can be applied to current debates. Explores how differences in incentives across organizations influence their stance on new technologies, including the range of solutions they consider when challenges do arise.

INNO 6230. Platform Innovation. (3 Hours)

Provides a business perspective on how to design and optimize platform-based business models for growth, value creation, and innovation and a practical analytical toolkit of theories, concepts, and frameworks. Uses case studies from various industries. Many of today’s growth enterprises and startups are organized as platforms. Platforms facilitate other actors and support interactions among a wider “ecosystem” of users, services, suppliers, etc., and they have potential for massive growth and value creation. High returns to successful platform business models lead companies to learn to act like platforms. Technology trends toward digitization, big data, automation, etc., accelerate these trends. Aimed at people looking to work within existing companies or those interested in starting or growing new platforms.

INNO 6240. Strategic Disruption Residency 1. (1 Hour)

Examines how organizations invest in new technologies to gain a competitive edge. Exposes students to different methods used to improve core business performance through strategic planning, technology road mapping, and market analysis. Offers students an opportunity for hands-on experience with formulating and implementing strategic plans.

INNO 6241. Strategic Disruption Residency 2. (1 Hour)

Emphasizes the importance of how to market and sell new products or services, both for internal and external applications. Offers students an opportunity to acquire a comprehensive understanding of how to design strategic revenue strategies that focus on how value is determined and revenues are matched against expense investments. Guides students to explore the challenges and solutions to implementing new innovation processes that leverage digital technologies and collaborative cultures. Includes a mix of research topics, cases, and hands-on learning.

Prerequisite(s): INNO 6240 with a minimum grade of C-

INNO 6242. Strategic Disruption Residency 3. (1 Hour)

Explores the policies and procedures germane to the internal operation of a technology-driven organization. Emphasizes the principles of risk management and quality control, training and documentation requirements, standards design, and IT support systems. Focuses on choosing, developing, and using operational metrics and analytics to govern a technology-driven operation and mining business intelligence from internal and external sources for use in running that operation.

Prerequisite(s): INNO 6241 with a minimum grade of C-

INNO 6250. Integrated and Applied Technology Leadership Project. (3 Hours)

Offers three executive seminars in which students build "chapters" that comprise their Integrated and Applied Technology Leadership (IATL) project. Primarily examines the technical and managerial challenges of implementing complex technology-based products—from system modeling, integration of modules, requirements verification, and formal specifications to the definition and overall coordination of the development team's efforts. Covers multiple product environments. Pairs students with mentors based on initial project proposal. Regular meetings with mentors offer students opportunities to refine the project and reinforce the business needs. May be repeated once.

INNO 6300. Managing a Technology-Based Business. (3 Hours)

Covers topics specific to managing a business or a strategic business unit within a firm. Considers the special issues related to technology-based firms. Topics include creating a culture, operations planning, staffing for technical excellence, dealing with technology vendors, dealing with advisers, supply chain management, and writing operations plans. Open to first-year graduate students.

INNO 6318. Innovation Driven Strategy. (2 Hours)

Introduces a number of entrepreneurship and innovation topics, including innovation and entrepreneurship as a value-creating activity for economies and firms; types of innovation (technological, process, products, business models); fundamentals of product development (design thinking, rapid prototyping, ethnography); startup creation and articulating a value proposition; the role and traits of the entrepreneur; maximizing odds of success and minimizing odds of failure; growing the startup and creating a market; finding or creating the right niche; pivoting and judo strategy; lean startup approach; innovation in established firms and resistance to change; organizational inertia; business model change; and technological discontinuities.

INNO 6962. Elective. (1-4 Hours)

Offers elective credit for courses taken at other academic institutions. May be repeated without limit.