WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY AT SPOKANE

COURSE OUTLINE

 

EM 591

 

Strategic Management of

Technology and Innovation

 

Spring 2004

 

Faculty:                        Dr. Hal Rumsey

                                    Mail:

SIRTI Building
665 North Riverpoint Blvd
P.O. Box 1495

Spokane, WA 99210-1495

                                   

                                    (509) 358-7936   FAX 7899

                                    E-Mail:  rumsey@wsu.edu

 

                                    Home Phone:    (509) 448-7968

                                    Office Hours:    Tuesday through Thursday:  10 a.m. - 3 p.m.

                                    Office Location:  Room 320B, SIRTI Building

                                    665 North Riverpoint Blvd.

                                    Spokane

                                    Call for appointment if possible.

 

                                    Course In-class Hours:  Tuesdays, 5:45  to 8 p.m.

 

You may contact me at the office, or at home during any reasonable hour.

 

REQUIRED TEXT:     Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation, Fourth Edition; Robert A. Burgelman, Clayton M. Christensen, and Steven C. Wheelwright; McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2004.

 

 COURSE DESCRIPTION

 

            This course features current coverage of the timely topic of managing technological innovation and rich exposure to the management of innovation.  It integrates technological strategy, new product development, and corporate entrepreneurship and innovation.

            This course features action-oriented cases to involve students and increase relevance.  It also integrates technological strategy, product development, and corporate entrepreneurship and innovation.

 

Since this course is a graduate seminar in strategic management of technology, we hope to integrate as many strategic thinkers in the course as possible.  If you know outstanding individuals with expertise in this area, we would love to invite them to participate with us.  Past presenters have included the CEO of The Boeing Company, President of Boeing Defense and Space Group, Retired Chairman of the Board of Washington Water Power, Director of Strategic Development for Pacific Northwest Laboratories, patent attorneys, and other notable guests.  I have been amazed at the boldness of past students in recruiting high level thinkers to share their thinking with the class.  I encourage you to be equally bold.


Class Schedule and Content

 

 

Week

Readings

Readings Topics

Cases

1

Part I

-Integrating Technology and Strategy

I-1

I-1

-Profiting from Technological Innovation

TBD

I-2

-How to Put Technology into Corporate Planning

 

2

I-3

-The Core Competence of the Corporation

 

I-4

-What is Strategy?

 

3

I-5

-The Art of High-Technology Management

 

II-1

-Management Criteria for Effective Innovation

 

II-2

-Patterns of Industrial Innovation

 

4

II-3

-Exploring the Limits of Technology

 

II-4

-Customer Power, Strategic Investment, and the Failure of Leading Firms

 

5

II-5

-Disruption, Disintegration, and the Dissipation of Differentiation

 

II-6

-Crossing the Chasm—and Beyond

 

II-7

-Competing Technologies:  An Overview

 

6

II-8

-Finding the Balance:  Intellectual Property in the Digital Age

 

II-9

-Note on New Drug Development in the United States

 

II-10

-Gunfire at Sea:  A Case Study of Innovation

 

7

II-11

-Architectural Innovation:  The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and the Failure of Established Firms

 

II-12

-Strategic Dissonance

 

II-13

-Intraorganization Ecology of Strategy Making and Organizational Adaptation:  Theory and Field Research

 

8

II-14

-Meeting the Challenge of  Disruptive Change

 

II-15

-Technological Discontinuities and Organizational Environments

 

II-16

-Strategy as Vector and the Inertia of Coevolutionary Lock-In

 

9

III-1

-The Lab that Ran Away from Xerox

 

III-2

-Transforming Invention into Innovation:  The Conceptualization Stage

 

III-3

-Technology Markets, Technology Organization, and Appropriating the Returns from Research

 

III-4

-The Transfer of Technology from Research to Development

 

10

 

Spring Break

 

11

III-5

-Absorptive Capacity

 

III-6

-Making Sense of Corporate Venture Capital

 

III-7

-Note on Lead User Research

 

III-8

-Discovery-Driven Planning

 

12

III-9

-Living on the Fault Line

 

III-10

-Managing the Internal Corporate Venturing Process:  Some Recommendations for Practice

 

13

III-11

-Ambidextrous Organizations:  Managing Evolutionary and Revolutionary Change

 

IV-1

-Communication Between Engineering and Production:  A Critical Factor

 

14

IV-2

-The New Product Development Learning Cycle

 

IV-3

-Organizing and Leading "Heavyweight" Teams

 

IV-4

-The Power of Product Integrity

 

15

IV-5

-Creating Project Plans to Focus Product Development

 

IV-6

-The New Product Development Map

 

IV-7

-Accelerating the Design-Build-Test Cycle for Effective Product Development

 

16

V-1

-Building a Learning Organization

 

V-2

-The Power of Strategic Integration

 

 

Discussion/Presentation of Strategic Audits

 

 


Deliverables:

 

1.  1 Concept Paper:  Each student will prepare one short concept paper during the course of the semester.  Topics may be developed from course readings, relevant journal articles, books, or current articles from the Wall Street Journal or other business publications.  Each paper will consist of a review of the basic concept (including a summary of the published background) and a critical analysis of how the concept or approach might be applied in your real-world context.  You should be able to treat the topic adequately in five or fewer, typed, double-spaced pages using 10-point font.  You may schedule your submission of the papers at your discretion.  I will accept no concept papers after April 15.

 

2.  2 Oral Presentations of Case Analysis:  Each student will be part of a team which will develop an analysis of the cases listed in the syllabus.  I anticipate that each student will be responsible for contribution to the analysis of two cases.  Powerpoint or other graphical presentation software files will be provided to the instructor prior to the presentation so they can be posted on the web site for the entire class.  A "talking paper" of the presentation will be available in the "notes view" of the presentation to summarize the major arguments of the analysis.  Teams will be evaluated as a whole; I will make no effort to distinguish the contributions of individual team members.  Presentations should be limited to a maximum of 30 minutes each. 

 

3.  Strategic Audit of Technology and Innovation:  Each student (or team of students) will prepare a case analysis of their own business or industry.  If you are a full-time student, you may select a company or organization with which you are familiar.  The audit will be based upon the concepts, tools, and models presented in this course, as well as other appropriate frameworks from your personal experience or other literature.  While the background of the analysis may, and probably will, include material pertinent to a whole industry, the analysis should focus on the level of the organization at which you function.  The discussion should address the issues of technology management that affect you most directly.  In general, the paper should summarize the salient points of the case, summarize the basis of analysis for the pertinent issues, and present final recommendations.  I would anticipate that 15 to 20 pages should be adequate to treat most of the cases.

 

4.  Participation/Quizzes:  The success of a graduate seminar such as this depends on the full participation of all class members.  If the level of discussion makes it clear that some students are not doing the required background reading, I reserve the right to administer unscheduled quizzes to determine your level of readiness.  The best method I have found for preparation in a course such as this is to outline the readings to insure I have captured their essence.

 

GRADING: Each student's grade will consist of the following elements:

 

1 Concept Paper

15%

2 Oral Presentations of Case Analysis

40%

Strategic Audit of your own firm

40%

Participation/Contribution/Quizzes

5%