Managing Innovation and Design Thinking

Course 1: Boosting Creativity for Innovation
- Successful contemporary business relies on the ability of all its employees to be creative. Creativity can be developed and refined, albeit with effort and practice. The first goal of this course is to provide a variety of experiences and activities with the aim of developing the creative abilities of each participant. A second goal is to understand the importance of creativity from a consumer perspective. Consumers are being offered more and more opportunities to customize their products and services, and are increasingly seeking to express their creativity through their purchasing choices. As entrepreneurs, we have the ability to shape the consumer environment in ways that help consumers enhance their own creative abilities, and develop a unique relationship with them as a result. This course is aimed at anyone who wants to understand what we actually know (as opposed to what we think we know) about human creativity, and how to use this knowledge to think differently and productively about business challenges. As the focus is on creativity as a cognitive function, it does not matter what your background is, what industry you come from or want to enter. After completing this course, past students report having acquired a set of strategies that enable them to tackle business problems with a fresh perspective. This course is part of the HEC Paris MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. If you are admitted to the full program, your coursework will count towards your degree program

Course 2: Strategic Management of Innovation
- This course will prepare you for making strategic decisions specifically about innovation. It will give you an understanding of why firms innovate, why and how they compete on innovation, and what role innovation plays in shaping the strategic decisions of companies. You will learn how to source innovation, the types and patterns of innovation, how to compete in dynamic standards battles and how to gain dominance, how to protect innovation from imitation, and the crucial question of timing - a new product launch and market entry. This course is part of the HEC Paris MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. If you are admitted to the full program, your coursework will count towards your degree program.

Course 3: Organizational Design and Management
- This course is aimed at everyone with an interest in entrepreneurship and innovation. This includes graduate and undergraduate students, current, past, and future entrepreneurs, managers of innovative firms, or managers in charge of leading innovation in their company. There is no formal prerequisite for this course. Throughout the course you’ll be exposed to an in-depth analysis of four applied case studies of successful ventures, as well as both theoretical and applied frameworks that will help you to better design and manage your organization. To begin, we recommend you take a few minutes to explore our website. Click on Course Content on the left to see what material we’ll cover in each of the four modules. You can also preview the assignments you’ll need to complete to pass the course. Click Discussions to see the forums where you can discuss the course material with fellow students taking the class. Be sure to introduce yourself to everyone in the Meet and Greet forum! This course should take you about 4 weeks to complete. By the time you finish it, you’ll have learned to: •Evaluate the value-creating potential of your business idea and design the business model that is best suited to capture this value • Manage talent and creativity by structuring the right incentives for existing employees as well as design strategies to retain and attract the very best talent • Design formal organization structures that fit with the strategy of your business and the culture of your organization • Understand and manage norms guiding behavior in organizations • Recognize and manage bottlenecks hampering organizational growth We really hope that you’ll enjoy the learning journey ahead. Good luck as you get started and we look forward to seeing you in class! Profs. Giada Di Stefano and Tomasz Obloj and HEC Paris Digital Learning This course is part of the HEC Paris MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. If you are admitted to the full program, your coursework will count towards your degree program.

Course 4: Design Thinking
- You want to identify an opportunity or to uncover creative insights and innovative solutions. You are curious about design thinking – a creative approach that is being used more and by entrepreneurs and in new ventures as well as in established firms. You do not understand why so many innovations, apparently developed with care, are not adopted by the users. You enjoy using services that provide a user-friendly experience and are curious to know how these innovations are developed. You are concerned by the growing complexity of innovations that require more focus on the usage and the user. If one of the situations above applies to you, then this course is for you! In “Design thinking for Innovation,” you will have the opportunity to discover and experiment with​ a systematic approach to uncover creative insights and innovative solutions. You will learn to recognize the specific type of situations where analytical approaches are not efficient and where design thinking is more effective. The course will follow a clear and structured process and you will work through several phases to understand what design thinking is, its foundations, principles and main phases. You will also understand the diffusion of design thinking in established firms. This course is part of the HEC Paris MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. If you are admitted to the full program, your coursework will count towards your degree program