DIGITAL INNOVATION AND TRANSFORMATION MANAGEMENT

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Digital Innovation and Transformation Management provides a comprehensive suite of strategy concepts, tools, methods and perspectives to understand and manage your way through a digital transformation and to develop a strategic response to the emerging digital revolution and to then align your organization for effective strategy execution.

Digital Innovation and Transformation Management course is designed to lead and execute digital innovation initiatives and develop new business models for existing and nascent companies in a wide range of industries.

Future-proof your organization by leveraging human-centred innovation and the power of digital technologies, to tap into customer insights and to deliver sustained competitive advantage by developing new products and services, entrepreneurial initiatives, innovative start-ups, consulting in strategic, marketing and R&D management.

This course serves as the capstone course for the Data science for management program. As a capstone, the goal is to integrate technological and managerial perspectives.

The course provides a comprehensive suite of strategy concepts, tools, methods and perspectives to understand and manage your way through a digital transformation and to develop a strategic response to the emerging digital revolution and to then align your organization for effective strategy execution. The course is designed to lead and execute digital innovation initiatives and develop new business models for existing and nascent companies in entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Students will be able to learn the key theoretical and conceptual categories (knowledge and understanding) that show an entrepreneurial approach to digital innovation and transformation management.

Students will be able to apply professional scheme, models and tools learned using cases studies, also making judgements and contributing to lecture interactions during presentations and discussions in class (communication skills).

Students will be able to learn how to learn, since digital innovation generates changes and evolves over time.

COURSE STRUCTURE

This course will help you to develop an understanding of and appreciation for an entrepreneurial approach to digital innovation and transformation management. The course will also introduce you to a set of analytical tools, and help you to develop skills in analyzing, evaluating, formulating, and implementing digital innovation and to develop a strategic response to the emerging digital transformation revolution.

The format emphasizes case analyses and class discussion. These activities will provide you with opportunities to enhance your critical thinking abilities on entrepreneurial and managerial implications.

You will learn to communicate both verbally and in writing critical evaluations and new ideas (theoretical and applied) of strategic issues within real firms.

You are expected to take a high level of responsibility for your own learning and that of your classmates. Most of your learning will come from class discussion of the cases.

Reading assignments must be read in advance to facilitate class understanding, discussion and debate. Class contribution will build on the readings, and you will be responsible for topics covered in either the readings or the course lectures. From time to time, I may hand out additional readings in class. Be sure that you get a copy of the readings.

Your attendance is crucial to your success in this course. In addition, I expect you to read all of the assigned readings before class. You are encouraged to draw on your own experiences, newspaper and journal reading to add to the understanding and application of class materials.

Should teaching be carried out in mixed mode or remotely, it may be necessary to introduce changes with respect to previous statements, in line with the programme planned and outlined in the syllabus. 

None

You are expected to take a high level of responsibility for your own learning and that of your classmates. Most of your learning will come from class discussion of the cases.

Reading assignments must be read in advance to facilitate class understanding, discussion and debate. Class contribution will build on the readings, and you will be responsible for topics covered in either the readings or the course lectures. From time to time, I may hand out additional readings in class. Be sure that you get a copy of the readings.

Your attendance is crucial to your success in this course. In addition, I expect you to read all of the assigned readings before class. You are encouraged to draw on your own experiences, newspaper and journal reading to add to the understanding and application of class materials.

DETAILED COURSE CONTENT

The course focuses on economic, strategic and technological dimensions of designing and developing digital solutions and business models to shape and lead technological and social impacts taking place in distributed innovation networks and ecosystems.

The managerial perspective emphasis the different organizational role at every level, e.g. project manager, team manager, functional manager, general manager, CEO, Founder, Startupper, that are involved in digital innovation and transformation enhancing the company competitiveness.

Currently, organizations with successful transformations deploy more technologies than others developing digital innovation, building managerial capabilities and planning talent development practices in the following critical technological areas of interest of the course: traditional web technologies, cloud-based services, mobile internet technologies, big data and big data architecture (eg, data lakes), internet of things, design thinking, artificial-intelligence tools, robotics (eg, robotic process automation), advanced neural machine-learning techniques (eg, deep learning), augmented-reality technologies, additive manufacturing (eg, 3-D printing).

In details the course will help you learn:

• the business, economic and technological dimensions to manage strategically the digital revolution;
• the entrepreneurial trade-off between existing business models and new digitally enhanced emphasizing platforms and ecosystems;
• the competitive collaborations among companies with different digital business models;
• how to shape and lead innovative solutions (product and service) in the digital contest.

An important part of the course are the several happenings and seminars, which will bring together leading practitioners at the cutting edge of digital technologies to discuss emerging issues.

TEXTBOOK INFORMATION

Textbook: BRESCIANI S., FERRARIS A., ROMANO M., SANTORO G. (2021). Digital Transformation Management for Agile Organizations. p. 1-216, Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK:Emerald Publishing Limited, ISBN: 9781800431720.

Reading Materials will be announced in class and electronically.

Course Requirements (modalità di valutazione)

The course credit will be allocated as follows:

Participation: 20 %

Case presentation: 25 %

Group project: 25 %

Final Exam: 30 %

Grades will be assigned based on the distribution of the scores in the class.

Participation

Each student is responsible for making regular and meaningful contributions to class discussions. Be prepared for every class to participate actively during the class activities and to share your insights with others class’s members. I will cold call (ask you to speak even if you have not volunteered).

A copy of an article will be due at the beginning of each class (first 10 minutes). The article (from selected sources) you will turn in must be strictly related to the assigned readings, and will generally consist of a topic that you select to highlight.

Because class participation is critical, DO NOT MISS ANY CLASSE. If you are absent or late for class and thus miss to turn in the article, your participation score for the day will be zero. There will be no make-up article.

Class contribution will be graded as follows:

4 Good contribution is characterized by both quality and quantity of speaking (and listening too!). I particularly will look for thought provoking questions or comments resulted from accurate and creative (novel and useful) analysis of the course materials.

3 Arguments are persuasive and add significantly to the quality of the discussion.

2 Arguments are occasionally persuasive and do not add significantly to the quality of the discussion.

If you turn in the article at the beginning of each class (first 10 minutes) your participation score for the day will be two.

1 Obviously, merely repeating what is said in the text or during the class discussion will not be considered high quality participation.

0 Absent or disruptive attendance.

If you feel that you have some difficulties participating in class discussion, I strongly encourage you to talk to me.

Case presentation

Each team will prepare a 20 minutes (time limit) professional presentation of a case analysis. All members of the team will participate. Presentations should be designed according to the guidelines presented in class and should include a brief company update. Updates should be properly cited and submitted at the time of the presentation.

All members of the team receive the same grade unless otherwise arranged. If you exceed time limit (20 minutes) I stop the presentation and I will lower your grade. Following the presentation, you have to ask questions and/or challenge decisions of the team. BE PREPARED TO DISCUSS THE CASE EVERY CLASS. PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT OTHER STUDENTS ARE SAYING AND ADDRESS YOUR COMMENTS TO EACH OTHER. I will ask you questions related to the case presentation even if you have not volunteered.

Group project

The group project is a written case analysis of a strategic issue faced by a firm (or an industry) you will select together with the others team members. The cases will be allotted to each team by request (written by e-mail), on a first-come first-served basis, subject to instructor approval.

The project will be a written case analysis according to the following guidelines: do not exceed 10 pages (pages limit); use a 12 point font, double spaced, 1cm all around; put names of the authors and page numbers on the paper. If you exceed pages limit I stop reading and I will lower your grade if you don’t have a conclusion. Exhibits (graphs, tables, pictures, etc.) are not counted against the page length (within reason).

Final Exam

The exam includes written and/or oral questions that will be drawn from lectures, readings, and class activities.

Learning assessment may also be carried out on line, should the conditions require it.

Individual case presentation

Group project