After this week’s studies and the associated exercise, you will understand the meaning of innovation and innovation management. Also, you will learn to identify and differentiate between various types of innovation. As a result, you will become acquainted with basic terminology that will help you to better process and understand the course content of the following weeks.

You will learn to understand how innovations diffuse in society. You will be able to describe the adoption life cycle and discriminate between the various adopter groups. You will also learn what it takes for someone to adopt something new. Altogether, you will gain a better understanding of what determines whether and how fast people adopt innovations.

In a knowledge-based and innovation-driven business environment, creativity is an essential capability if an organisation is to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. All innovations begin with creative ideas, and creativity is also needed during the entire innovation process. So, it is imminent that employees in any job and at any level of the organisation can contribute to innovation with creative ideas. This module comprises of four instruction videos, one interview with a creativity consultant, and two assignments. After this module you will understand what creativity is and how you, other people and groups become more creative: crucial knowledge for any manager that wants to excel in innovation!

Organisations receive many new ideas from employees, suppliers, and customers. But they often do not realise the innovative potential of these ideas because they fail to properly manage them. By studying this module and doing the associated exercises, you will understand the basic principles of idea management. You will be able to differentiate between three types of idea management programmes, and learn about their different characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. In addition, you will learn about two general challenges that many idea management programmes face: how to motivate people to continuously submit ideas and how to improve the quality of ideas. A better understanding of the principles, differences, and challenges of idea management will help you design appropriate idea management programmes that turn new ideas into successful innovations.