Managing Innovation (EIBS7302)

What do you need to do?

Blogging is the process of sharing your thoughts about a particular subject on a social media platform. Many professionals use it to establish their knowledge, build credibility, and engage with an audience.

For this assessment, you will create your own blog on the EIBS7302 blogging platform on learn.uq.edu.au to share your thoughts on innovation. Think of it as starting a conversation with your peers about how you see innovation and what makes it interesting to you. Your own blog needs to use real-world examples and explain them in light of the weekly course topics to your peers.

You and your peers will also engage in conversations with each other by commenting on each other’s blog posts. The goal is to:

• Create a community of thinkers focused on innovation;
• Make intangible innovation concepts from the course tangible and applicable in the real world;
• Learn to communicate and present ideas professionally; and, most importantly,
• Have fun!

How do you need to do it?

Your own blog must build on concepts from the course and be structured as follows:

• Part 1 (up to 800 words): Kick-off your blog in week 1 with a post about why you are interested in innovation. This post should introduce your personal story and explain why innovation is important for you based on an illustrative real-world example.
• Part 2 (300-500 words per post): For at least five of the twelve weeks, add new posts to your blog to continue establishing your knowledge and building credibility in your area of interest. Every post should feature a real-world example that is aligned with your personal interest and discuss and analyse this example in light of the weekly topic. Think of these posts as the puzzle pieces that all together tell others why you are knowledgeable and credible in your area of interest.

As part of this assessment, you will also need to engage with and comment on blog posts of your peers. This will create a community of thinkers focused on innovation and ensure that everyone in the course has an audience for his or her blog.

• Part 3 (100-200 words per post): For at least six of the twelve weeks, make constructive comments on blog posts of your peers up to one week after they have been posted. It is important that you make at least twelve comments in total. For example, you could comment on two blogs posts each for six weeks, or you could comment on one blog post each for twelve weeks. In your comments, you can add additional insights to your peers’ posts, explain why some information in their posts is particularly revelatory, and even constructively challenge the posts of your peers. Important is that your argumentation is professional, clearly substantiated, and advances the conversation.

The expectation is that the blogs will be evidence-based. For this reason, each post on your own blog needs to contain at least one link to a source where your information comes from (e.g., news article, corporate homepage, academic article, etc.). This also applies to comments on your peers’ blog posts if your comments should introduce new information.

How do you present this information?

You are free to be creative and can choose how you want to create and present the blog posts and comments. Important is that each post:

• Focuses on a specific course topic;
• Has a clear line of argumentation with a beginning, middle, and end; and
• Communicates coherently, consistently and cohesively in a professional manner.

Overall, your blog posts need to be able to stand alone, explain and situate innovation in light of the course topics, and create a conversation around your chosen area of interest. In turn, because we want to build a community of innovation thinkers, your comments on your peers’ blog posts need to explicitly tie into their posts and conversations and be written in light of the course topics too.

Can you use Artificial Intelligence (AI) for this assignment?

The answer is a decisive yes. You do not have to but certainly can use AI to support you completing this assessment task as long as you adhere to the following rules:

1. You are responsible for everything you publish. Keep in mind that AI often makes information and references up and that it also often omits critical information. So, don't trust AI and only use it to support you in writing about real-world examples that you either know by heart or where you can verify the information.
2. You must clearly reference any use of AI each time you use it. Please include an additional paragraph at the end of your post outlining what you used AI for and describing the prompts you used. Failure to reference AI use is in violation of academic honesty policies and may constitute student misconduct under the Student Code of Conduct.

What do you need to do?

This assessment focuses on disruptive innovation. You will need to play the Back Bay Battery simulation game which Professor Christensen developed to demonstrate the dynamics of disruptive innovation. You will receive the link to the simulation and have class time to get started. After you have played the simulation, you are required to reflect on your simulation experience. Your mark will not be influenced by whether you succeed in the simulation game or not. What matters is that you draw on the concepts and approaches covered in weeks 1-5 to reflect on the simulation.  

How do you need to do it?

You need to write up your reflection as an essay of no more than 1,500 words and address the following aspects:

• What was the overall outcome of your simulation?
• What have you learnt about managing innovation from this simulation and why?
• What were the challenges that you faced in trying to grow a profitable business and why?
• How do these challenges relate to disruptive innovation theory?

How do you present this information?

Your reflection needs to be understandable by others. Therefore, it is important to communicate your reflection coherently, consistently and cohesively. This means that your report needs to be:

• Precise and logically structured; 
• Provide insightful and convincing explanations; and is
• Professionally presented.

Why do you need to to reflect? 

The act of reflection provides us with signposted moments to STOP, think about the bigger picture and synthesize information. When you reflect on your simulation experience, establish what you would do differently (or the same way) and why.

Remember that Professor Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School has developed the concept of disruptive innovation and is famous for it. If you are unsure of what disruptive innovation is after the seminar, you can read the first chapter of his book.

Can you use Artificial Intelligence (AI) for this assignment?

The answer is a decisive yes. You do not have to but certainly can use AI to support you in completing this assessment task as long as you adhere to the following rules:

1. You are responsible for everything you publish. Keep in mind that AI often makes information and references up and that it also often omits critical information. Since this assignment requires you to reflect on your own simulation experience in light of this specific course, it is probably best to only use AI to improve your own writing while making sure to verify all information it includes in your text.
2. You must clearly reference any use of AI. Please include an additional page at the end of your submission outlining exactly what you used AI for. This page needs to include a list of all the prompts you used and an explanation of why you used them. You do not need to provide an explanation for each individual prompt but can group prompts based on their joint purpose (e.g., if prompts 1, 2, and 3 aimed for one overarching aim). Failure to reference AI use is in violation of academic honesty policies and may constitute student misconduct under the Student Code of Conduct.

What do you need to do?

You need to write a case study—similar to the Harvard cases we used in class but shorter—about a real-world innovation example (i.e., a specific innovation, organization, or industry) to teach others about innovation management. You are required to pick one of the course's subjects, identify and gather information about a real-world example of your choice that allows you to discuss this subject, and analyse the example with the concepts and techniques from the course. The overall goal is to demonstrate that you understand a complex innovation management subject well enough to be able to explain it to others in an accessible way.

How do you need to do it?

Your case study should be no longer than 2,000 words and contain the following elements:

1. An introduction of the case study that creates interest
2. A background section that provides insights into the case study's business environment
3. A core analysis section that provides insights into the focal subject based on the case study
4. A conclusion section that summarizes the lessons learnt from the case study
5. A list of references (not included in the word count)

How do you present it?

Your case study needs to communicate coherently, consistently and cohesively to enable others to learn about the focal subject. It is important that you distinguish between the significant—all the information you need to explain the focal subject—and the trivial—all the information that do not really matter for your analysis and only distract readers. Therefore, your case study needs to be:

• Precise and logically structured;
• Only include significant information;
• Identify trustworthy sources that others could use to validate or reject the case study information; and be
• Professionally presented, which includes consistent referencing of sources in APA style. See https://web.library.uq.edu.au/research-tools-techniques/referencing-style-guides#apa

Can you use Artificial Intelligence (AI) for this assignment?

The answer is a decisive yes. You do not have to but certainly can use AI to support you in completing this assessment task as long as you adhere to the following rules:

1. You are responsible for everything you publish. Keep in mind that AI often makes information and references up and that it also often omits critical information. So, don't trust AI and only use it to support you in writing about real-world cases that you either know by heart or where you can verify the information.
2. You must clearly reference any use of AI each time you use it. Please include an additional page at the end of your submission outlining exactly what you used AI for. This page needs to include a list of all the prompts you used and an explanation of why you used them. You do not need to provide an explanation for each individual prompt but can group prompts based on their joint purpose (e.g., if prompts 1, 2, and 3 aimed for one overarching aim). The page does not count towards the word limit (i.e., use as many words as you need to accurately explain what you did). Failure to reference AI use is in violation of academic honesty policies and may constitute student misconduct under the Student Code of Conduct.