Future of Work and Collaborative Innovation Networks
MIT Sloan 15.599, spring term 2005, Tue/Thu 4:30-6:00 pm, E51-063, T. Allen, P. Gloor
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Overview

The course "The Future of Work and Collaborative Innovation Networks” is a project course in which teams of students work as consultants in real organizations to help increase knowledge worker productivity and innovation, creating "Collaborative Innovation Networks" by combining principles from Thomas Malone’s book “The Future of Work” with Interaction Design and Knowledge Flow Optimization.

The goals of this course are

  • To teach you how to convert organizations into Collaborative Innovation Networks.
  • How to use our TeCFlow framework based on temporal modeling of social networks.
  • How to increase organizational innovation and effectiveness by working as real consultants in real companies.
  • To provide you the opportunity to work with a diverse team in a real industry setting in the US or abroad.
  • To teach skills that are critical for the success of entrepreneurial ventures – especially skills needed for sound analysis and decisions about new product design and development, customer feedback integration, large project management, and mergers and acquisitions.
  • To give you input and experiences that will be useful in making career decisions.
  • To help you network with executives, entrepreneurs and related professionals.
  • To teach you in a real-word environment the principles of “The Future of Work” and “Collaborative Innovation Networks” by applying it yourself as consultants in real-life companies and organizations.
  • To deliver real value to the host companies.


How Can We Convert Organizations into Collaborative Innovation Networks?

We are at the dawn of a new way of working and innovating together! The Internet enables a radically different mode of innovation. Knowledge workers on the Web collaborate in internal transparency and information sharing instead of hoarding information. They communicate in direct contact networks instead of through hierarchies. And they innovate and work towards common goals in self-organization instead of being ordered to do so. Based on in-depth experience with over 40 organizations over the last ten years, this course will teach you how to build organizations that are more creative, productive, and efficient by applying principles of creative collaboration, information sharing, and social networking. As a sponsor and member of Collaborative Innovation Networks you may change your leadership style to become a better leader and collaborator of innovative teams. Specifically, this course will teach you:

  • How to leverage Collaborative Innovation Networks to develop successful products in R&D.
  • How to use Collaborative Innovation Networks to develop better customer relationships.
  • How to exploit Collaborative Innovation Networks to establish better project management processes.
  • How to utilize Collaborative Innovation Networks to build high performing teams in M&A scenarios.
  • How to locate, analyze, and measure the impact of Collaborative Innovation Networks applying the TeCFlow (Temporal Communication Flow Optimization) framework based on social network analysis.


The course consists of three parts:

  1. In ten classroom sessions you will learn about the Future of Work, Design for Interaction, and Collaborative Innovation Networks.
  2. In the second part, you go on a two-week assignment doing a real consulting project on-site at partner company locations in the US and abroad.
  3. In the third part, you will analyze the communication data collected during your on-site consulting work. You will prepare and carry out a final presentation for your customers and for the class. You will also enter your findings in anonymized format into the CKN project database.


Grading
Class participation 20%
Mid-term written exam 20%
Consulting performance/final presentation 60%


Prerequisites
As the students will be directly working with client firms, participants should have multi-year practical business experience. We expect most students to be first- or second year MBA students, although by permission of the instructors exceptions can be made. After the classroom part of the seminar, an exam will assess the CKN-relevant skills of the students, assuring the industry partner that the students have mastered the foundations of the CKN framework.