Companies engage in many activities intended to impact the revenue sides of their income statements. They introduce new products, services, and business models, and attempt to reach new markets and customers. When they succeed, it is often by leveraging particular expertise in creative, scientific, or technological domains. The core capability required in these activities is innovation. In this course, we’ll examine the special challenges of managing businesses and business activities that depend on innovation. These range from design, to drug discovery, entertainment, product development, software and video game development, and beyond. These activities often unusual unique business difficulties — for example, thriving in markets where a handful of offerings capture 90% of the profits, winners are hard to predict, and the average offering is not profitable — and also exciting business advantages — for example, product differentiation that supports high profit margins that are relatively immune to swings in commodity market prices. This is a course focuses on the business models, strategies, processes, and management of growth-oriented firms and the growth-oriented efforts of mature firms.
Required