Bachelor 2023/2024

Open Innovations

Type: Elective course

Area of studies: Business Informatics

Delivered by: Department of Business Informatics

Where: HSE Graduate School of Business

When: 4 year, 1, 2 module

Mode of studies: offline

Open to: students of one campus

Instructors: Zeljko Tekic

Language: English

ECTS credits: 4

Contact hours: 40

Course Syllabus

Abstract

Open Innovation (OI) is defined as a distributed innovation process based on purposively managed knowledge flows across organizational boundaries. In essence, it encompasses a wide range of practices related to external knowledge acquisition and commercialization—from simple crowd engagement (such as choosing a new ice cream flavor) to the involvement of lead users in developing medical devices, R&D purchases, venturing, licensing agreements, and free revealing of inventions. In the OI approach, firms look beyond their boundaries to exploit the creativity and expertise of users, customers, experts, and online communities to co-create new products and services. By expanding firm boundaries, open innovation reshapes how companies—whether large corporations, SMEs, or startups—strategize, compete, create, deliver, and capture value. The additional layer of complexity brought by artificial intelligence (AI) further increases the importance of collaboration. In the era of AI, open innovation becomes a vital driver of competitiveness: it enables companies to gather and access data, acquire cutting-edge technologies, attract top talent, and leverage diverse expertise. To thrive in this landscape, organizations must master the art of complex, open collaboration. To prepare students for this context, the Open Innovation course covers the fundamentals of open innovation ideas, tools, practices, and strategies, aiming to equip students with the understanding, knowledge, and skills required to manage open and user innovation projects in their future workplaces. A distinctive feature of the course is a company-sponsored hackathon, where students participate in an intensive, practice-based co-creation process. The hackathon allows them to experience open innovation both as active participants—collaborating, prototyping, and pitching solutions—and as innovation-aware observers, who develop insight into what motivates companies to engage in such collaborations and how these processes are managed.

Learning Objectives

• The course is designed to help students understand, experience, and manage open innovation (OI), reflecting the fact that collaboration has become a central feature of contemporary innovation. Few firms today rely solely on closed, internal R&D; instead, most combine in-house efforts with partnerships, user involvement, and ecosystem collaboration. As a result, open innovation has become a mainstream approach in many industries, and future managers need to be fluent in its logic and practice. While grounded in research and theory, the course is practice-oriented and built around a company-sponsored hackathon, which gives students a concentrated co-creation experience. They learn from both perspectives: as active participants, developing and pitching solutions to authentic company problems, and as innovation-aware observers, analyzing the motives, practices, and challenges companies face when engaging in open innovation. The course highlights the role of the innovation manager, who must be able to design, coordinate, and extract value from collaborative innovation processes. By integrating case studies, analytical frameworks, and the hackathon experience, students gain a holistic understanding of how OI works across large corporations, SMEs, startups, and non-commercial organizations. In doing so, the course prepares students to contribute as innovation managers, product and project managers, ecosystem collaborators, and co-creators who can thrive in a world where innovation is increasingly open and collaborative, particularly in the development of new products and services.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• • Understand, explain and apply fundamental open innovation concepts and practices.
• • Understand and explain the main motivation for organizations to use OI, what OI practices organizations use, who are their main partners in OI, and how they profit from open innovation.
• • Understand, explain and critically discuss the differences between open and closed innovation.
• • Differentiate between the different types of OI tools (co-creation with users, crowdsourcing, Lead Users, Innovation Intermediaries, in-licensing, open source…) and choose the right OI tool for different problem sets.
• • Understand the basics of intellectual property rights and their role in OI.
• • Understand, explain and critically discuss the role of open innovation in managing Digital transformation and AI projects.
• • Analyze and synthesize companies’ open innovation strategies.
• • Effectively communicate innovative initiatives in oral and written form.
• • Productively work in groups.
• • Critically reflect on its own learning.
• • Analyze viable business models, develop an initial business model and test its feasibility • Co-create a minimum viable product (MVP) in a group • Shape technology-based ideas into workable business concepts and learn how to test them in the marketplace. • Differentiate and distinguish the different process activities associated with new product/process/service development, inside or outside an established firm.

Course Contents

• What is innovation and why does it matter – intro to the topic and the course
• From closed to open innovation: Innovation as a process and its models
• Open Innovation - cases across industries
• Sources of innovation
• Value appropriation mechanisms, IP rights, and Open innovation
• How technology is commercialized
• Business models and open innovation – user-centricity
• Strategy, big companies, startups, and ecosystems

Assessment Elements

• Exam
  The exam is taken in a written format based on a selection of open-ended questions online with proctoring (start exam platform). Time allowed: 90 minutes. Candidates should answer ALL questions in PART A and ONE out of TWO questions in PART B.
• Open innovation in Russia (team project)
  Each team should propose at least 5 open innovation projects done by Russian organizations you would like to analyze within the course. The instructor will select 3 of these 5, which the team should analyze. You are free to select companies within the following limitations: • All projects should come from different companies. • Projects should be from 2015-2022. • First come, first served. To circumvent the repetition of projects in multiple teams, a common database in form of a live google doc will be formed. Each team will enter projects they want to focus on (by entering the name of a company, a link to the reference, and a one-sentence description of the project, as some companies may have multiple OI projects). • Questions to be answered in your presentation for each project: o What was the goal for the project? o What is the main motivation for the organization to use OI? o What OI practices did the organization use? o Who were the organizations’ main partners in OI? o How did OI create value for companies? o What could be the main drivers and barriers to adopting and using OI from the perspective of the company, the industry, and the country? o What did you learn from these examples? o Are there any common patterns? o What could be done differently? The companies should be entered on the list from September 08 (noon) when the database will be open for editing till September 20 (noon). Each day of delay will be penalized by -1 point from the final result of the task. To be delivered: Team presentation (12-15 slides, 10 minutes per team) The assessment criteria (see the meaning of the scale for a full explanation later) • Comprehensiveness, coherence, and quality of the analysis (including Q&A) (40%) • Collection and presentation of evidence from the research to justify arguments (including Q&A) (40%) • Technical and procedural excellence of presentation (20%) Value: 25 points • Project work that is not submitted and/or presented will not be graded (grade = 0). • Individual contribution to a team project is going to be peer-evaluated (see more later) • Points for this task are allocated based on the live presentation in the corresponding time slot (seminar group) during the module. There is no possibility to postpone a presentation/do it in another seminar group. • NO presentation in dedicated time slot = NO points for the task (even if the presentation is submitted). • Q&A session after the presentation is an integral part of the presentation. • Presentation must be submitted in the selected platform by Wed, Nov 15, 11:59. If a presentation is submitted after the deadline (but before the seminar), a team will be penalized with -1 point for each hour of a delay from the final result for the task. • Presentation NOT submitted to the selected platform (i.e., LMS) before the seminar = NO points for the task (even if the team is present at the seminar) Start: Friday, Sep 08 Submission deadline: Wed, Nov 15, at 11:59 *Peer evaluation applies
• In-class discussions, engagement, and homework
  This class requires a high level of motivation and active class participation. This is not simply a lecture attendance, it is ENGAGEMENT and PARTICIPATION in the lectures, with deep preparation, timely and relevant comments and discussion, comments linked to the previous lectures, personal experience or other courses; opinion based on evidence, thinking, responding to the lecturer’s questions.
• Case Discussion
  Students will be asked to respond to few questions related to selected cases, and latter to critically discuss them in classroom.

Interim Assessment

• 2023/2024 2nd module
  0.25 * Case Discussion + 0.25 * Open innovation in Russia (team project) + 0.35 * Exam + 0.15 * In-class discussions, engagement, and homework

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Chesbrough, H. W. (2003). The Era of Open Innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review, 44(3), 35–41.
• Tidd, J., Bessant, J. R., & Pavitt, K. (2012). Managing innovation : integrating technological, market and organizational change. Chichester [Etc.].
• von Hippel, E. A. (2016). Free Innovation. United States, North America: MIT Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.606752F7

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Baldwin, C., Hienerth, C., & von Hippel, E. (2006). How user innovations become commercial products: A theoretical investigation and case study. Research Policy, (9), 1291. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsrep&AN=edsrep.a.eee.respol.v35y2006i9p1291.1313
• Brunswicker, S., & Chesbrough, H. (2018). The Adoption of Open Innovation in Large Firms. Research Technology Management, 61(1), 35–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/08956308.2018.1399022
• Chesbrough, H. (2020). To recover faster from Covid-19, open up: Managerial implications from an open innovation perspective. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2020.04.010
• Chesbrough, H., & Rosenbloom, R. S. (2002). The role of the business model in capturing value from innovation: evidence from Xerox Corporation’s technology spin-off companies. https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/11.3.529
• Chesbrough, H., Lettl, C., & Ritter, T. (2018). Value Creation and Value Capture in Open Innovation. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 35(6), 930–938. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12471
• Hienerth, C., von Hippel, E., & Berg Jensen, M. (2014). User community vs. producer innovation development efficiency: A first empirical study. Research Policy, (1), 190. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsrep&AN=edsrep.a.eee.respol.v43y2014i1p190.201

Authors

• YAKOVLEVA NATALIYA VADIMOVNA
• Tekich Zhelko
• GLADKOVA MARGARITA ANATOLEVNA