• University of Leeds

Innovation Management: Winning in the Age of Disruption

Learn how to manage innovation systematically to disrupt markets and how design thinking can turn ideas into profitable products.

15,591 enrolled on this course

light bulb lighting innovation
  • Duration

    2 weeks
  • Weekly study

    4 hours
  • Accreditation

    AvailableMore info

Develop skills for successful strategic innovation

Not all organisations innovate and those that do often find it difficult to initiate, develop, and deliver consistently. But managing innovation is crucial in leading valuable change.

This two-week course from the Leeds University Business School will show you how to manage innovation by exploring how the world’s most successful businesses use systematic processes to harness its power.

Discover how to tackle the challenges of disruptive innovation

Disruptive innovation can fundamentally change entire industries so businesses need to have an innovation strategy in place to stay ahead of the competition.

You’ll look into how to embed a culture that fosters innovation in order to find opportunities and protect your core business, before you move on to explore strategies to manage disruption.

Explore open and collaborative innovation methods

Collaborating with external partners may sound daunting but it can allow you to solve a multitude of innovation problems and reach a common goal much quicker.

This course will guide you through the types of open innovation that can be utilised at various stages of innovative strategy to create different dynamics.

Learn the design thinking process to manage innovation

Design thinking (DT) allows teams to structure and manage ideation, development, and, ultimately, innovation. You’ll learn about the key elements and principles behind the design thinking process. You’ll also learn insights, hints and tips for practically applying design thinking from one of the world’s leading industry practitioners.

Discover how to protect your innovations

A crucial aspect of innovation management is protecting the intellectual property (IP) of your innovations. You’ll learn strategies to minimise the risk of IP infringement to gain a competitive advantage.

Download video: standard or HD

Skip to 0 minutes and 11 seconds So the focus of this course is really about the practical application of some tools, techniques, process, organisation, and culture to be able to improve the way you drive and manage innovation in your own business or organisation. Well, I think anybody would be interested in this course. Anybody- an entrepreneur, somebody who’s looking to develop a new innovation, but also big corporations, because big corporations need to know how to protect their innovations as much as small companies. Innovation normally happens through stumbling on some opportunity by pure chance. But what is the process of actually doing innovation inside your organisation? And that’s where the focus actually needs to be.

Skip to 0 minutes and 50 seconds The main takeaways from this course are to understand and manage innovation strategically, to learn from examples of how IBM manage innovation processes, and get familiar with a tool that will help to analyse your current innovation capabilities and identify any gaps. IBM is a disrupter. So we’re doing new things like cognitive computing and IBM Watson, which is creating totally new ways of doing things. Been very disruptive across quite a lot of industries, actually. A lot of people talk about innovation and leave out the idea of creativity. And creativity is central to innovation. It’s also co-creative, and it requires interaction with others, particularly with others with different mindsets and different ways of doing things.

Skip to 1 minute and 33 seconds I would expect that learners will move away from seeing innovation as a chance outcome. And they move more towards how innovation becomes systematised in their organisation and how they can do this. Once a learner has completed this course, I would expect them to be able to very clearly identify what an innovation is within the company, and also to identify what the risks may be to that innovation, so that they may manage it and protect it. There are lots of things you can do to, very practically and very quickly, improve the way innovation is driven in your own organisation. So they can take things away from the course and very quickly make a difference where they work.

What topics will you cover?

  • Identify obstacles, sources and pitfalls that affect successful management of innovation.
  • Differentiate between innovation in core business and transformative business opportunities.
  • Discuss why management of innovation is important.
  • Identify key enablers for managing innovation in core business.
  • Evaluate actions required in own organisation(s) for improving management of innovation in core business.
  • Describe the disruptive nature of innovation.
  • Identify managerial approaches to respond to disruptive change.
  • Define the concept of open innovation and the openness continuum.
  • Identify the different approaches through which open and collaborative innovation occurs.
  • Evaluate actions required in own organisation(s) for gaining value from open and collaborative innovation.
  • Reflect on the core elements of design thinking (DT).
  • Explore how design thinking can be used to foster innovation, with exposure to some tools and methods of design thinking.
  • Explain sources of corporate knowledge and protectable intellectual property rights.
  • Identify risks associated with knowledge leakage and IP infringement.
  • Explore proactive and reactive strategies for the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights.
  • Analyse innovation capabilities at own organisation.

Who is this accredited by?

The CPD Certification Service
The CPD Certification Service:

This course has been accredited by the CPD Certification Service, which means it can be used to provide evidence of your continuing professional development.

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • Explain different types of innovation and innovation dynamics.
  • Identify strategic innovation challenges in organisations.
  • Explore core innovation and the key enablers required for successful innovation in existing operations, business and markets.
  • Develop managerial approaches to organise innovation processes.
  • Explore the key capabilities which support successful innovation.
  • Reflect on innovation responses in real case studies.

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for anyone with an active interest in innovation who is looking to improve their skills or help to deliver innovation in their organisation.

Whether you work in the public or private sector, in a start-up or an established multinational, this course will give you the skills to successfully generate and implement innovative ideas.

What do people say about this course?

"Thank you for putting this course together, I have found it very valuable and it has changed my views on approaches to innovation - in some ways, I recognise why there are frustrations in organisations when innovation isn't set as a strategic objective and/or isn't resourced. The course has enabled me to think about how I enable employees and other organisations I engage with to innovate using a variety of different approaches. This course has been professionally developed and delivered, thank you for all your hard work."

Who will you learn with?

Professor of Strategy and Innovation at the Leeds University Business School.

http://business.leeds.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-directory/profile/krsto-pandza/

Associate Professor in Innovation Management Practice at the University of Leeds
https://business.leeds.ac.uk/divisions-management/staff/869/tony-morgan

Who developed the course?

University of Leeds

As one of the UK’s largest research-based universities, the University of Leeds is a member of the prestigious Russell Group and a centre of excellence for teaching.

Learning on FutureLearn

Your learning, your rules

  • Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
  • Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
  • Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores

Join a global classroom

  • Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
  • Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
  • Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others

Map your progress

  • As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
  • Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control
  • Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate

Want to know more about learning on FutureLearn? Using FutureLearn

Learner reviews

Learner reviews cannot be loaded due to your cookie settings. Please and refresh the page to view this content.

Do you know someone who'd love this course? Tell them about it...

You can use the hashtag #FLmanageinnovation to talk about this course on social media.