MODULE TITLE: - INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT

MODULE DESCRIPTOR

This integrative module aims to develop critical awareness of contemporary issues in international business.

It aims to provide students with an understanding of the ways in which technology is brought to market.

It does this by focusing on key technology management topics from the standpoint of an established business as well as new entrepreneurial ventures.

Strong emphasis is placed on frameworks and methods that are both theoretically sound and practically useful. It will provide students with both an understanding of the issues and the practical means of dealing with them in a business context.

In this module students will discover and consider how to identify, discuss, evaluate and avoid the common pitfalls in managing innovation. It examines how large and small organisations have to fundamentally reorganize in order to innovate speedily and successfully.

It assesses in what ways and to what extent globalization has affected production, governance, societies and human knowledge and exposes students to developments in innovation management. Against the contemporary issues of the day, it encourages students to consider alternative measures and evaluate the technical and political challenges of their implementation

Assignment Question

Guidance notes

You are required to demonstrate knowledge and understanding from your individual research and wider reading. Your work must be presented in essay format style. As an academic piece of work you are expected to link theory and practice. You should take care to ensure that the work you submit has a high standard of presentation. You must acknowledge the sources of information and evidence using the Harvard referencing system. All assignments are subject to the University's regulations on plagiarism and must be submitted in electronic form for checking.

ASSIGNMENT TASK

Ryan Avant et al (Economist 4th October 2014) have suggested that innovation and technology developments have in the past created pain but ultimately benefits.  The Third Wave 'digitalisation' may prove to be more problematical.

You are to produce a Briefing paper (Essay) to the senior management team (in preparation for their participation at an Innovation and Technology conference) in response to this assertion.

Introduction

State the purpose, limitations and methodology of the essay. You may also wish to contextualize the emerging importance of this debate.

1. The rise of the new 'Platforms'

A critical review of this development is expected.  A review of the work by Avant (et al) is required (Economist, January 2014)

2. The concept of the 'robber barons'

A critical review of the work by Foreman A (2014), Piketty (2014) which suggests that the lack of management of the innovation in the technology world has created a pattern of Business Behaviour replicating the 19th (Foreman) and 17th (Piketty) century patterns.

3. The third great wave

A critical review of the suggestion that, the digitalisation (plat formization) of business activities will lead to the premature de-industrialisation of the Business world. (Avant October 2014)

Conclusions

You should provide a completion statement confirming the achievements identified in the introduction Structure, construction and referencing.

Module Learning Outcome from the Assignment -

Upon successful completion of this module students will be able to:

• Demonstrate a critical understanding of some of the major international trends and developments in technology and innovation and their relationship to international business
• Analyze change and continuity in international business using cyclical and evolutionary models of change
• Advance a multidimensional understanding of the causes and consequences of technology
• Critically evaluate a range of normative questions in relation to people, technology and the marketplace in the 21st Century
• Reflect analytically on the knowledge developed for innovative action
• Understand the significance of innovation and how it links to wider strategic issues within the firm
• Appreciate how process innovations alter the ways of transforming a range of inputs into products and services for customers and end users
• Have insights into contingency factors of firm size, technological complexity and environmental uncertainty which influence the precise choice of processes.