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:
- In ten
classroom sessions you will learn about the Future of Work,
Design for Interaction, and Collaborative Innovation Networks.
- 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.
- 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.
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