Contents

What happens when you run a start-up? What are the advantages of scale? Small is always beautiful? "Managing David" is the 2018/2019 edition of the MAIN Laboratory run by Alberto Di Minin and Andrea Tenucci. The course is based on case studies and simulation from Harvard Business School. Each case refers to a different innovation management problem and theory.

Objectives

Through this course we aim to provide students with actionable knowledge, concrete ideas on innovation, management, marketing and accounting. Moreover we help them to develop their capability to critically discuss a business strategy and develop their capacity to work in team.

List of topics

• Module 0 - The entrepreneurial game: this first module will allow students to start to explore entrepreneurial strategies and dynamics, learning by doing which are the qualities that separate a success from a failure.
• Module 1 - Kick-off and intro to the Lab: this module will provide insights into challenges faced by small companies in competing with giants.
• Module 2 - Starting a new venture. What does it takes?: the purpose of the module is to understand whether and how marketing research, formal analysis, planning and learning by doing may be useful in turbulent, unpredictable environments. Learn why companies may decide to prototype their products. Explore the challenging trade-offs that leaders face as they launch a new business, product, service, or process.
• Module 3 - Innovation trajectories: the purpose of the lecture is to illustrate the challenges of innovation and the potentials of several trajectories to find innovative ideas. Strategy-makers can account for inertia as they formulate
  strategy, and the lecture will show why it is important for them to do so.
• Module 4 - Disruptive innovation: this class will provide multiple opportunities to discuss core strategy and innovation topics, such as: patterns of innovation, e.g., new technologies competing to replace older generations. Types of
  disruption, e.g., low-end versus high-end. The innovation ecosystem, e.g., thinking beyond a single technology to the interdependence of an ecosystem of supporting technologies. Systems strategy, e.g., thinking beyond the product to understand the role of technology architecture and systems. The innovation process, e.g. learning under conditions of uncertainty, scaling up for execution.
• Module 5 - Marketing strategies: the module will provide students with an understanding of how an innovation may shift from initial success to widespread adoption. The module will show the potential effects of efforts in generating
  and commercializing new R&D process through open innovation to support innovation.
• Module 6 - Pricing: this module will focus on the pricing choices a company has to face. Market research, competition analysis and price setting will be topics to deepen.
• Module 7 - Summing-up: What have you learnt? Time to reflect on your take-away!