Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
Instructor:
Phone:
Email Address:
Office:
Office Hours:
Robert C. McNamee
Assistant Professor / Academic Director
Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute (IEI)
215-204-4119
robert.mcnamee@temple.edu (** best communication method **)
538 Alter Hall
In Person or via WebEx by appointment / Q&A Forum via Blackboard
“To cease to think creatively is to cease to live”
– Benjamin Franklin
COURSE ABSTRACT:
Being creative is about solving problems or approaching opportunities in novel and valuable ways. This
course is designed to help ALL students better harness their full creative potential—whether you think:
“I am not creative” or “I already have more ideas than I can handle”, this class will help you come up
with more creative ideas that offer more value and have greater impact on the world. Although
creativity has been studied by nearly every professional domain, this course focuses on creativity as a
driver of organizational innovation—from non-profits to small businesses and large corporations to
students’ own entrepreneurial startups, creativity and innovation is critical to providing value and
ensuring long-term survival. Throughout this course students will develop important life skills while
learning to creatively solve problems through a number of real-world innovation challenges. No matter
what career or profession you are going into, being more creative and appreciating how and why
modern organizations function the way that they do will help you to be more valuable, more
employable, more innovative, and more entrepreneurial.
COURSE BACKGROUND:
Creativity has been studied by nearly every professional domain—philosophers, psychologists,
sociologists, educators, and business professionals have all wondered about creativity and how we can
enhance it. This course builds on theory and practice that suggests people are intrinsically creative and
curious: “Perhaps no single phenomenon reflects the positive potential of human nature as much as
intrinsic motivation, the inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise
one's capacities, to explore, and to learn” (Deci & Ryan, 2000, p. 70). ). Enhancing students’ creative
potential equates to enhancing their potential as human beings—Masow perhaps said it best: “My
feeling is that the concept of creativeness and the concept of a healthy, self-actualizing, fully human
person seem to be coming closer and closer together, and may perhaps turn out to be the same thing.”
(Maslow, 1971, p. 57). However, this course also acknowledges that society, organizations, educational
systems, and many other factors frequently stifle our tendency to be different, to consider or share
crazy ideas or perspectives, to think outside the box, to break the rules, and to challenge the status quo.
Throughout the course we will discuss creativity as an aspect of people, as a process, as a feature of
press (context), and as a product. We will learn to appreciate both the generative, divergent, synthesisfocused phases of creativity as well as the focusing, convergent, evaluation-focused phases and we will
take things further to highlight the potential for improvement and evolution that brings together the
best that evaluation and generation have to offer (Bloom’s Taxonomy). Don’t worry if you think you are
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
not a creative person. A major portion of this class is to help everyone to appreciate their creative
potential and to become more creative. We will cover a number of techniques that will directly help you
to come up with a greater number of ideas, more original ideas, and consequently better ideas. Lastly,
research has shown that the most creatively effective teams are those that have members that are
highly innovative as well as those that are more highly adaptive. The necessary balance ensures there is
a place for people with all cognitive styles—no matter who you are you can contribute to innovation.
Given the far-reaching impact of organizations (corporations, non-profits, non-governmental
organizations, volunteer groups, governmental agencies, etc… ) on society as well as the fact that the
vast majority of students will work in some capacity in or with organizations in their professional lives,
we have decided to focus on creativity in business and organizational contexts. “Deviance tells the story
of every mass market ever created. What starts out weird and dangerous becomes America’s next big
corporate payday. So are you looking for the next mass market idea? It’s out there … way out there”
(Fast Company, 2002; emphasis added). Despite the previous quotes emphasis on markets and
businesses (after all it is from a business magazine), innovation is critical to all organizations and
deviance is just as critical in predicting social change and shifts in high-impact social ventures,
government agencies and the like. “Me too” businesses or non-profits just don’t cut it anymore.
Finally, business leaders have reported that they are not prepared to handle the rapidly changing
environment that their organizations face and senior managers have stated that among the most
important and valued traits in employees are creative problem-solving and the generation of new ideas.
Whether you want to start the next Facebook, take control of your work-life balance with a lifestyle
business, have an impact on the world with a social venture, or drive change and innovation in an
existing company—this course will help you achieve these goals.
EVERYONE CAN BE CREATIVE
EVERYONE CAN CONTRIBUTE TO ORGANIZATIONAL INNOVATION
COURSE LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
Students will understand the importance and impact of entrepreneurship & innovation
on organizations and society
Students will understand fundamental theories of creativity
Students will understand various business theories and cutting-edge management
concepts critical to creativity and innovation
Students will understand how to find entrepreneurial and innovation opportunities
Students will understand how to apply design thinking approaches and creative problem
techniques to generate, evaluate, and improve innovative ideas
Students will understand why purpose is important to all organizations
In many ways this course is intended to help you diverge, NOT to converge. It is quite likely you will
leave this course with more questions than you started with. As you will see, people frequently move
too rapidly past problem formulation / framing and jump right to solutions – I hope that I help you take
your time to realize the many options you have in your personal and professional lives. At the same time
I hope to give you the tools to approach these problems and choices in fundamentally different ways.
When you creatively approach these big questions new roads open up that did not seem to exist before.
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
Human Behavior GenEd Course
As a Human Behavior GenEd course, this course is designed to teach students about an all important
human behavior—creativity—that is linked to the evolution and continued survival—via innovation—of
a form of community that is especially prevalent in modern society—organizations. Creativity is one of
the most important human behaviors and is core to our humanity. In addition, organizational innovation
and the closely related concept of entrepreneurship are important phenomena that are critical to the
continued survival of all organizations as well as the evolution of regions, industries, and society as a
whole.
“Today, much confusion exists about the proper definition of
entrepreneurship. Some observers use the term to refer to all small
businesses, others to all new businesses. In practice, however, a great
many well-established business engage in highly successful
entrepreneurship, The term, then, refers not to an enterprise’s size or
age but to a certain kind of activity. At the heart of that activity is
innovation: the effort to create purposeful, focused change in an
enterprise’s economic or social potential.”
— Peter Drucker, The Discipline of Innovation
Below are the GenEd learning goals as well as those specific to the Human Behavior GenEd category that
students will learn in this course.
GenEd Learning Goals
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Develop students’ thinking, learning and communication skills;
Develop skills in identifying, accessing and evaluating sources of information; and
Promote curiosity and lifelong learning
Ethical reflection, civic engagement, and awareness of current issues;
Collaborative learning and teamwork skills;
An understanding of and appreciation for Temple’s urban and regional setting;
An understanding of issue related to globalization;
An understanding of issues related to sustainability;
An understanding of community-based learning.
Human Behavior specific course learning goals:
 Understand relationships between individuals and communities;
 Understand theories or explanations of human behavior used to describe social phenomena;
 Examine the development of individuals' beliefs, behaviors, and assumptions and how these
affect individuals and communities;
 Apply one disciplinary method to understand human behavior or explain social phenomena;
 Access and analyze materials related to individuals, communities or social phenomena; and
 Compare and contrast social phenomena across individuals and communities.
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
READINGS:
Book (Required): “Business Model Generation: A Handbook for
Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers”, 1st addition by
Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur, Wiley 2010 (ISBN-10:
0470876417 / ISBN-13: 978-0470876411). A preview can be found
here and the complete book is available free online for a limited
number of concurrent users in Temple’s library.
The majority of our readings in this course will come from practitioner targeted business journals like
Harvard Business Review or Sloan Management Review as well as other industry leading magazines that
focus on innovation and entrepreneurship generally or in specific industries. HBR and SMR are some of
the top practitioner journals (i.e., read by managers / executives) and I believe that you can handle this
type of material even if it pushes you more than a textbook would.
Magazines (Extra Credit): Since you are not buying an expensive text book or course packet, I would like
you to put your money to another equally good use – subscribing to two (or more) magazines in your
areas of interests or about innovation / entrepreneurship generally (highly recommended are Wired or
Entrepreneur). Magazines are one of the least expensive ways to learn a great deal about what is going
on in an industry or the world more generally (and if you receive them in paper form you may be more
likely to read them). We will have a great deal of unstructured and semi-structured discussion via
blackboard forums in the course—if you do some outside reading this will make you a more interesting,
knowledgeable, and valuable participant in these discussions (as well as in conversations in general). I
will give students 1 point of extra credit for each relevant magazine students subscribe to (up to 2 total
points). Simply bring in a magazine with your name on the mailing label (showing you subscribe to it) or
bring in / email me a copy of your order form showing your name and the magazine name (extra credit
is only available in the first three weeks of class so go find something you’re interested in).
FLIPPED CLASSROOM / COLLABORATIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT:
Being innovative is about thinking outside the box and integrating knowledge and ideas that come from
a number of different sources into a holistic picture of the world. This course is taught with this
perspective in mind. I am NOT going to spoon-feed you knowledge and test it with multiple choice tests.
This is a university and the intention of this class is to teach you how to be more innovative as well as
why these approaches are important and why they work as they do.
Although there are many benefits to not using a textbook and instead selecting a series of articles / book
chapters about various important and related topics, this format also requires a bit more work on all our
parts. It requires that you synthesize knowledge—that you make the effort necessary to connect the
pieces together (with some guidance from me and your peers). Each student will get something
different via this process and this is fine—each of you has different goals in life, each of you is your own
person with your own pre-existing knowledge schemas into which this new knowledge fits, each of you
will innovate in different ways.
This class mostly utilizes a flipped classroom approach—students will read and discuss material outside
of class and we will apply that material during in-class discussions and exercises (with very brief lectures
to discuss some additional important issues / topics). Although there are a number of benefits to the
flipped classroom approach—primarily the fact that creativity can only be enhanced if it is practiced and
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
applied—this model also requires that you read and actively discuss the readings outside of class. Even
though it is always the case that the more you put into a class the more you get out of it, this is
especially the case with this format and in this course.
Learning has to be a collaborative activity – between you and me, you and your peers, among those in
your groups, and among the class as a whole. The assignments you turn in during this class will be
“public” (to the class) and peer review is a significant part of the feedback that you will receive. This
format requires a great deal of respect and openness to the diverse perspectives and opinions of your
peers. It is critical that you listen to one another and try to truly understand what others are trying to
say so that you can help one another do more and do better. Novel or radical ideas inherently have a
high chance of failure. However, it is much easier to make a crazy idea more realistic, feasible, and
impactful than to make a safe idea more creative or novel. Be supportive of a little radicalness and don’t
judge people for being crazy – that is where the magic (and the big ideas) happen. Contributing to a
positive creative climate (not a judgmental climate) is a part of your participation score. If you have not
already realized it, your peers at Temple are not the ones you will compete with in life—some of your
best partners going forward in your personal and business life may be in this very class with you.
GRADING & ASSIGNMENTS:
Grading in this course is designed to measure effort and engagement around the course material and to
motivate learning and thinking, not memorization and ‘gaming’ the system. You have a series of
assignments that are designed to build off of one another, off of your readings and forum discussions,
and off of our in-class discussions and exercises—if you do a poor / incomplete job on earlier
assignments it will make later assignments that much more difficult. If you don’t read the assigned
papers, don’t participate actively in forum conversations, or don’t pay attention to class or during
exercises you will do poorly on multiple graded portions of the class (and won’t learn anything).
Students who get an ‘A’ in this class typically spend 5+ hours every week outside of class working on
readings, discussion board, assignments, exercises, and generally practicing their creativity.
Weekly Quizzes, Homework, or Exercises
Written Assignments
- Trends Analysis
- Product / Service Innovation
- Product / Service Innovation REVISED
- Process / Managerial Innovation
- Business Model Innovation
Official Peer Reviews (6)
Kickstarter Video & Webpage Project
Participation / Engagement (Forums & in Class)
(Individual / Group)
(Group Project)
(Individual)
(Individual)
(2-3 Person Groups)
(2-3 Person Groups)
(Individual)
(Individual)
(Individual)
25%
35%
6%
6%
6%
6%
6%
12%
15%
18%
For all written assignments and final project, electronic copies must be submitted to Blackboard before
the time and date indicated at the end of this syllabus and/or in blackboard forum descriptions.
Late submissions automatically lose a grade as well as an additional grade per day that they are late.
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
Course Roadmap:
Grp. Trends
Analysis
Prod. / Serv.
Innovation
Prod. / Serv.
Innov. Rev.
Proc / Mgmt
Innovation
Jam
Bus. Mod.
Innovation
Jam
Kickstarter
Project
Jam
Jam
Tent. Prod /
Serv. Idea
Prod. / Serv.
Reviews (2)
Proc / Mgmt
Reviews (2)
Bus. Mod.
Reviews (2)
SCAMPER
HW
MindMap
Weekly Forum Posts (3-5 posts per week from week 2 through week 14)
Extra Credit for Innovation & Entrepreneurship Relevant Events (up to 5 pts)
We encourage our students to attend events sponsored by the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute
(IEI), Center for Design & Innovation (cD+i), and other organizations that encourage innovation
throughout Temple and Philadelphia. During the semester I will award up to 5 extra credit points for
attending pre-announced / approved events (1 point per event). You may only get extra credit in one
class per event so please make sure to include “GenEd #### – Professor McNamee” when you sign in as
an attendee at these events (I have no way to know you attended if you do not sign in).
Weekly Quizzes, Homework, or Exercises (20%)
So why do quizzes or exams? To make sure that students actually do the readings (and learn appropriate
lessons). Why do quizzes instead of exams? To make sure people read prior to class so that we can have
dialogue during class (tests often motivate cramming at the last minute). Quizzes will ask about concepts
that you would get if you read the articles carefully, think about the content, and connect it to other
readings / class material (they will not ask quantitative / memorization type data). Quizzes can cover the
previous or current week’s topics and assignments (retention is key if you are to apply these lessons).
Quizzes will be true/false, multiple-choice, or short answer and I drop the lowest quiz score for each
student (this also serves as the attendance policy for the class – you can miss one quiz without it
affecting your grade). In addition, throughout the semester you may be given some homework
assignments and we will do numerous in-class exercises. Any of these homework assignments or
exercises may be collected and will count as a quiz grade. Exercises are typically designed to help you
move ahead in your various projects so you have the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
Trends Analysis (≈2500 words not counting pictures / diagrams) (6%)
In order to innovate within a domain, field, or industry it is important to understand how that industry
functions as a whole as well as how political, social, economic, and technological trends / changes are
affecting existing companies and changing the landscape of opportunities for employment and
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
entrepreneurship. Nearly every industry has undergone rapid changes in the last 10+ years and
entrepreneurial / innovative opportunities (not to mention job prospects) are not in the same places
that they were in the past. It is critical that students understand how these trends have affected the
fields and industries in which they hope to make their careers.
For this assignment students will self-organize into groups of 4 to 6 and pick an industry or field to focus
on (I will provide a list but also give students an opportunity to self-organize around common interests).
Each group will focus on one industry / field and students will work together to do an extensive analysis
of trends and opportunities in this industry (this is lots of work and can only be accomplished in the
short time you have if you work together). Please provide citations to your sources as your apparent
research is a significant part of your team’s grade. Your individual grade on this assignment will be based
50% on your groups rating of your contribution, and 50% based on my scoring of the team’s project.
At a minimum this project should include:
 An overview of the industry including the types of companies that work together to make it up
(10 pts)
 A comprehensive assessment of macro-level political, economic, social, and technological trends
and an explanation of how and why these trends impact their field your industry (10pts)?
 An explanation of how and why these trends create current and upcoming opportunities for
entrepreneurs and innovative companies as well as allow for novel career paths for students
(10pts)?
 Throughout paper demonstrate sufficient primary and/or secondary research (10 points).
Innovation Assignments
These projects will be submitted anonymously to blackboard so that your peers can review them. Please
title your posts TUID# [YOUR ID NUMBER]: [Catchy Innovation Description].You are required to include
your TUID# in the title and I strongly encourage you to use a catchy innovation description so that more
of your peers read your assignment and give you feedback during JAMs.
*** NOTE: if you do not include your TUID# in your post title your peers cannot find it for official
reviews. Therefore, if you do not include your TUID# in the title you will not be assigned peer
reviewers or peer reviews to complete and you effectively lose 2 points off your total grade. Sorry, I
know this might seem harsh but it is very easy / straightforward to follow these directions.
Product / Service Innovation
I am a big believer in killing multiple birds with each stone thrown.
Also, all of us in the Entrepreneurship department try to push
students to get their ideas out there – you can sit on your ideas for
years and kick yourself when someone else does it – of you can put
your ideas out there, receive feedback from experienced
professionals, take one step towards turning your ideas into reality…
and maybe win some money!
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
Each of you will submit an initial version of your idea to Blackboard for official peer reviews and JAM
session discussion. After you have received feedback from me and your peers, you will submit a revised
version of your idea to the IEI’s Innovative Idea Competition. In Fall 2011 and Fall 2012, I required
students to submit to this competition and a total of six students won awards – five out of six of these
students indicated they would never have submitted if it was not required of them…
The format for this assignment (both the initial and revised versions) is more regimented since it is the
same as the IEI’s competition.
Product / Service Innovation (2 pages or less, 11 pt Arial font) (6%)
In two pages (11pt Calibri) describe the following sections (please download and use the latest template
provided by the IEI):
Product, service or technology description (40 points)
 Describe the product, service or technology. State exactly what it does and how it does this.
 What problem does the product, service or technology solve, and/or what need does it fill?
 What are the ideas strengths & weaknesses?
 Are there any remaining unknowns and what are your assumptions that may need to be tested?
Beware of Flying Cars and Time Machines
We all know that it would be great to have a flying car or a time machine, however, these are not
innovative ideas—they are opportunities that currently don’t have viable solutions. An innovative idea is
a solution to a valuable, previously unsolved problem/opportunity. I realize that you may not have all
the technical questions resolved at this early stage in the ideation process, however, the more questions
you have answered the better your assignment will be (and your score / grade will reflect this). If there
is any doubt that your idea is technically feasible you should research this extensively (and provide
evidence of the ideas feasibility in your write-up). If you are still not sure your idea is feasible, it may not
be the best idea to submit to this competition (and may not be an idea you should waste time thinking
about unless you have, or want to develop, the technical skill to fully explore and test it).
Uniqueness/Innovativeness (30 points)
 How is your product, service or technology different than others that solve the same problem or
fulfill the same need? Or in other words, why will people want to purchase it? (Faster, cheaper,
more functionality, higher performance, cooler design, more convenient, safer, more
environmentally friendly, etc). This is called the “competitive advantage.”
 Describe the “direct competition” (products that perform the same function and compete
against each other, such as iPhone and Android smart phones) and “indirect competition”
(products that are close substitutes but perform the same or similar function, such as netbooks
and tablet computers).
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
Novelty Takes Time and Lots of Research
This assignment is looking for a new-to-the-world innovation (something that does not exist anywhere
in the world currently) so substantial thought, time, and research is needed—it is very easy to fall in love
with an idea only to find out that someone else has already done the same thing. We often find that
more than 60% of the ideas that are submitted to this competition can be very easily found via a quick
Google search (and these assignments / submissions do get very low scores on this section). For
example, if a food truck focused on Peanut Butter and Jelly already exists somewhere (it does) an idea
proposing one on Temple’s campus is not new to the world. If you take the time to apply the techniques
from this class, don’t wait till the last minute, and research your ideas extensively you can do this!
Customer (10 points)
 Who will purchase your product, service or technology? (Remember that the end user is not
always the purchaser. Ex: Moms/Dads buy Coco Puffs cereal but their children eat it.)
 Describe your typical customers. If selling to consumers: describe age, income, ethnic group,
geography, use/lifestyle profile (amateur athletes, heavy TV watcher), etc. If a business: what
industry/industries, size of business by sales or number of employees, geographic location, etc.
Value Proposition (20 points)
 A value proposition is a concise statement that describes your product, service, or technology
and how it creates value for the customer, and why a customer will purchase your offering
instead of the competition’s. (Example: The newest Apple iPad is a tablet computer featuring a
breakthrough Retina display. At 2048 by 1536 resolution, far crisper than even the resolution of
HDTVs, the newest iPad makes everything look far sharper and more lifelike compared to any
other tablet computer, resulting in the most powerful visual experience available today.)
 Draft a one or two sentence value proposition for your innovative idea!
Product / Service Innovation REVISED (2 pages or less, 11 pt Arial font) (6%)
This revised idea will be submitted to the IEI’s Innovative Idea Competition and your score from that
competition will count for half of your final grade on the revised project (myself and other colleagues
are judges for this event). The other half of the score on the revised project is based on how much you
improved / evolved the idea from the previous submission (50 pts) as well as a short write-up about the
creative process and techniques that you utilized in coming up with the idea (50 pts).
The sections for the IEI submission are the same as described above and your score in the competition is
worth half your grade for this assignment:
 Product, service or technology description (40 points)
 Uniqueness/Innovativeness (30 points)
 Customer (10 points)
 Value Proposition (20 points)
The format for the initial and revised product / service innovation assignments is the same as above.
However, in addition to the above sections, for your revised idea please provide a complete description
of the creativity techniques and creative problem solving process you applied to come up with and
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
evolve your idea from start to finish. This section does not count in the above page count and should be
around 500 words.
Process / Management Innovation (1000-1200 words – not counting diagrams) (6%)
Most people tend to think of products like the iPhone when they think about innovations. However, one
of the key lessons to take away from this course is that innovations take many forms—and these can
often be even more impactful / valuable than product innovations.
Value is at the center of all forms of innovation and understanding how an organization’s activities (what
they do) create / add value for stakeholders is critical if you are to appreciate how and why
organizations are structured the way they are (or if you want to understand how to optimize a new
venture). Recognizing value chain activities is also directly related to your employability and
innovativeness in existing companies—if you understand how your job and your career are ultimately
linked to value creation for customers / consumers you will fully grasp your value to the organization
while becoming aware of new paths to drive innovation.
For your process / managerial innovation you will work in teams of 2-3 to come up with a new,
innovative way for a company to do something it does internally. Students should pick a specific small to
medium sized company (no Apple, Sony, or Wal-Mart projects), map out how this company currently
creates value for its customers, and then propose an innovation that changes these internal systems or
processes. This innovation can either change the way the company produces the service or products
that it sells to consumers (i.e., it can change the internal processes to increase the value created or
reducing the cost to provide the same value) or it can improve a management practice to enhance a
supporting / organizing function in some way. Finally, you can also change a process at the intersection
between two companies that sell to one another or that work together in some way.
No Laundry Lists
This should be a singular integrated innovative idea. Although this innovation may require changing a
number of processes or may have several outcomes it should not simply be a laundry list of changes that
an organization could implement. Describe a singular integrated innovation then highlight the broad
range of impacts or changes that might result.
Framing / Positioning is Critical
Care should be taken to make sure this assignment is written up as a process or management innovation
and not as a product / service or other innovation. Many process / management innovations enhance
the products and services that an organization can deliver, however, for this paper these are positive
outcomes of the process / management innovation and the primary innovation should remain central to
your write-up. Similarly, many companies design products that can be leveraged by other companies for
process / management innovation (e.g., inventory systems)—again for this paper the process /
management innovation should be your focus and it should be written from the perspective of the
company implementing the process / management innovation (not the company that develops the
product that the company is using).
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
For this assignment I am less concerned with you coming up with a truly new to the world innovation.
However, please stretch yourself to be creative – describing the impact if SEPTA implemented a process
innovation that NJ Transit already uses would make for a really boring assignment. This innovation
should be a different innovation than your product / service innovation but may be a complimentary
process innovation to that other innovation (I don't want to read the same stuff all over again so please
don't reuse content).
Talk to Managers
In order to do a good job with this you will need a solid understanding of the inner workings of a
company. If you don’t have extensive experience working in a company then one of the easiest ways to
get a big head start on this is to interview the owner or manager of the company you want to work on.
Don’t be shy – when you are a student it is the only time in your life where you have an excuse to do
this—later in life it is impossible to call a company and ask them to tell you their secrets. People want to
help young people and students.
At a minimum this project should include:
 Introduction / Overview of the Innovation
 A brief overview of the target company including the market segments / types of customers the
company serves as well as the types of value relevant to these customer segments (10 pts)
 A detailed description of the current process / management system including how the activities
this company engages in create value for their customers (10 pts)
o Include a diagram that shows how the primary activities of the firm are linked together
into an overall process and describe how each activity is connected to specific value
propositions for customers
 A discussion of the problem or need (i.e., why the current process or management system needs
to be improved) (10 pts)
 A detailed description of the new process / management system (10 pts)
o Include a diagram that shows how the new process flows as well as how the activities
inherent in the new process are connected to specific value propositions for customers
 Discuss how the new process / management system creates more value, reduces costs, or
generally makes the system run more effectively and efficiently (10 pts)
o Describe any impacts that the new process would have on other parts of the
organization (the good, the bad, and the ugly)? Can the organization earn additional
money by implementing this process / management system? (10 pts)
 Throughout the paper demonstrate sufficient primary and/or secondary research (Please
provide citations to your sources) (10 pts)
Your individual grade on this assignment will be based 50% on your groups rating of your contribution,
and 50% based on my scoring of the team’s project.
Business Model Innovation (1000-1200 words – not counting diagrams) (6 pts)
For this assignment you will work in teams of 2-3 (NOT the same team as for the process / managerial
innovation assignment) to use the business model canvas from the Business Model Generation book.
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
You will take an existing business model for a specific small to medium size company and change the
model to help you understand the utility of the canvas.
Single, Integrated, All-Encompassing Business Model Innovation
A business model innovation goes far beyond a product, service, or process innovation—be careful that
you understand this. A business model innovation is a singular innovation (again not a laundry list of
changes) but this innovation likely affects many if not all the boxes in the business model canvas—
students often have difficulty with this at first and you need to push yourself to think about how the
innovation can become central to the new business model. This is different than a product-line
extension, it is not simply a product innovation, and it is not simply a new service. Take care that you
really understand what a business model innovation is and focus on that for this assignment.
Tips & Tricks
One option that makes things easier (and nearly always guarantees a business model innovation is
created) is to change the revenue model for an existing company. Another option is to fully retool the
business model so the company becomes a social entrepreneurial company (not a non-profit, but a
company that’s primary goal is social impact). Finally, students can use analogy to apply the business
model patterns highlighted in the book to a different type of company (e.g., if you can come up with a
viable freemium model for a fast food company you have an innovative new business model).
At a minimum this project should include:
 Introduction / Overview of the Innovation
 Copies of both the original (10pts) and new business model canvases (10pts)
 A discussion of the synergies or disconnects across the original business model (10pts)
 A discussion of how the new model changes the previous business model (20pts), including:
o Synergies or disconnects across the new business model
o Strengths of new model
o Weaknesses of new model
 As well as (10pts):
o Complementarities vs. cannibalization of current business models
o Current trends and how they affect the original and new model
 Throughout the paper demonstrate sufficient primary and/or secondary research (Please
provide citations to your sources) (10pts)
Your individual grade on this assignment will be based 50% on your groups rating of your contribution,
and 50% based on my scoring of the team’s project.
Complementing or cannibalizing the current business model?
Cannibalizing the current business model means that you target the same customer segment and
replace the current products and services of the company (i.e., the new model replaces the old model).
This is not necessarily a bad thing – if the company themselves does not innovate and offer better
products or services someone else will. Complementary business models means the new model helps
market the past products and services of the firms – sometimes enhancing both new and old services
and making everything substantially better than the previous model (and better than the competition).
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
Peer Reviews (12%)
Throughout the semester you will be responsible to do six (6) short (≈250-300 words / less than half a
page) peer reviews of other students’ innovation assignments. I will email you the ID#s of the papers
you are assigned to review after the assignments are submitted. To do a good job with these reviews
you will need to carefully read your peer’s assignment, do a small amount of research / Googling, and
give constructive feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the assignment as well as how it can be
improved. These reviews are due on alternative weeks to when normal assignments are due. Your
reviews should be added as comments under the students’ assignments in Blackboard (anonymously so
students will not know who reviewed them). Finally, you will also be asked to complete a small online
survey about the idea you reviewed that will help us improve the competitions and class assignments as
well as to help me grade your peer reviews.
***NOTE: To get credit for your review you must label it with the title: Official Review by ID# [YOUR ID
NUMBER]. I use a title search to find these so if you title official reviews incorrectly they are not found.
Please do not title other posts / JAM comments with this or any other special titles (this is unnecessary).
Kickstarter Video Final Project (15%)
Each student will be responsible to pick one of their innovative ideas from the course (or another idea
that developed via your thinking in the course) and turn it into a Kickstarter style video pitch and short
webpage-like write-up. Kickstarter (kickstarter.com) is a relatively new and unique crowdfunding
platform. It may be a great way for some of you to eventually get funding to launch one of your ideas as
a business. These short (2-4 minute) video pitches and visually-appealing webpage-like write-ups help
teach you to be clear, concise, and practical while also making your ideas interesting and compelling.
This should really improve your elevator pitch (an important skill for all innovative people and especially
entrepreneurs).
The overall plan for this course is for you to submit rounds of ideas throughout the semester and get
peer and my feedback prior to picking your idea for this project. You should plan to spend a good
amount of time on this during the final 3 to 4 weeks of the semester.
Find Your Purpose!
This project is designed to help you find your purpose since Kickstarter, like the rest of the world,
supports ideas with purpose more than those driven solely by profits! Your purpose should be core to
this Kickstarter business idea (i.e., linked to the core capabilities of the organization you have
conceptualized – selling T-shirts and donating a portion of the profits to xyz non-profit is not particularly
creative or innovative and will not get a high grade for this project). This is the final creative challenge
you undertake in this course – identifying a double or triple bottom-line version of a company or
concept you would like to explore.
There are many good example videos on the site and the following pages give some direction:
 Overall instructions / explanation for how it works: http://www.kickstarter.com/start
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013




FAQ- All your questions will be answered: http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq
Also here: http://www.kickstarter.com/help / http://www.kickstarter.com/blog
Kickstarter School (really comprehensive advice section – just added in 2012 so make the most
of it): http://www.kickstarter.com/help/school/defining_your_project
Practicalities- creating a good video: http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/creators-guide-to-video
For this assignments:
 Please post your video on Youtube as an unlisted video (these do not show up in searches but
can be easily viewed if a person has the weblink):
http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=181547
 For the “webpage” you can use a free site like Weebly or simply create a formatted / attractive
document with images / graphics in Word. It does not need to be on the web, however, it
should be formatted and visually appealing (i.e., include pictures, diagrams, etc…)
 I generally prefer that students do NOT create an actual Kickstarter project (even a draft one) –
we want to maintain the reputation of Temple University and so it is critical that we do not put
half-baked projects out that might detract from the impact of more developed projects.
At a minimum this project should include:
 Video (2-4 minutes)
 WebPage-like document (850 -1000 words + images)
 Reward Levels (Be creative / link to company concept -- usually 3 to 7 or so levels)
 Content to cover / convey (across both video and webpage):
o Who your company is
o What you do
o How you do it
o Why you do it!!! (your purpose)

Grades for this assignment are based on:
o Did students explain a creative, new idea that leveraged macro-trends and modern
business models (10 pts)?
o Did students describe a clearly conceptualized idea that offered potential and had more
strengths than limitations; few unexplored unknowns; and seemed to be free from
unexplored, incorrect assumptions (10 pts)?
o Did student’s idea exhibit strong purpose that was central to the business or product
proposed (10 pts)?
o Did students take into account the Kickstarter investor community and convey value for
this community--did it seems like it might be viable on Kickstarter (10 pts)?
o Did students show that they had done sufficient research for this idea (10 pts)?
Participation / Engagement (18%)
Includes participation both during class as well as online via the forums setup in Blackboard. Your peers
throughout your life will be your most important collaborators and should be one of your most
important sources of knowledge and learning. Unfortunately, since we have a large class, everyone may
not have the chance to contribute in-person as often as they would like, therefore we will utilize the
online discussion feature of blackboard to initiate and continue discussions between classes.
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
IBM Style JAMs: In order to increase the ability for everyone to ask questions and contribute we will
leverage JAM sessions a number of times during the semester. IBM successfully utilizes JAMs to get tens
of thousands of people online during fixed periods of times (e.g., 72 hours) to discuss critical topics,
innovation challenges, and strategic changes being planned for the company or their clients. In our
classroom setting, we will typically have JAMs during a few 1 hour 20 minute class periods (or during the
first 1 hour and 20 minutes of longer class sessions). During this time everyone from the class will be
responsible to be online in Blackboard’s discussions board simultaneously. We will do a practice open
ended discussion during the first few weeks of class but most of the discussions during the semester will
focus on recently submitted assignments / innovative ideas. I hope that people will get engaged in
numerous conversations during these sessions and I will be active in as many conversations as I can.
These JAM sessions are semi-synchronous and create a dynamic and exciting context to have a
conversation with 40+ of your peers at the same time. I don’t care where you connect from, but I will
track people’s participation and everyone is expected to be online and active during the entire session
(if you use a computer lab on campus make sure they are open for the whole JAM session; if you plan to
use wireless please make sure it is working prior to the start of the JAM).
Weekly Forum Posting Expectations
Finally, I want students to continue these conversations between classes in the forum areas and this will
be an important part of your participation score. These forums are a critical feature that makes the
flipped classroom approach work in this course. Students should discuss readings with each other
between classes and I will post important questions that may appear on quizzes or should help students
learn the most lessons from the readings. Each week students should post a minimum of 2 to 3
comments or new threads and during a JAM it would not be unreasonable for a student to post 7 to 10+
comments or new threads in the Jam forum (depending on how long their posts are). I look at number
of posts, length of posts, the extent to which posts tie in to class content, and the quality of
conversation in evaluating this part of your participation score. There is no reason to use special titles in
your normal posts or JAM posts – the system recognizes your ID# even if you post anonymously.
Please do NOT label any normal posts as “official reviews”.
Both verbal and electronic contributions should be relevant and helpful. Relevant contributions show
you are engaging with the issue being discussed and that you are well-informed regarding the class
subject matter. Helpful contributions advance or improve the discussion by: bringing in new ideas,
helping to understand the issues being discussed, directing attention to relevant parts of the articles,
keeping us "on track", and possibly changing the subject when needed. Good posts are those that
encourage dialog and discussion around course topics—please post new topics by including your
thoughts or ideas as well as a question or invitation for feedback/discussion. Some ideas for topics
include: linking outside readings to course material, pointing out dilemmas when various articles / topics
are considered in conjunction, or highlighting ideas / readings that made you think about things
differently than you did before.
Creativity & Organizational Innovation - Fall 2013
FINAL NOTES:
Student and Faculty Academic Rights and Responsibilities: Freedom to teach and freedom to
learn are inseparable facets of academic freedom. The University has a policy on Student and Faculty
Academic Rights and Responsibilities (Policy #03.70.02), which can be accessed through the following
link: http://policies.temple.edu/getdoc.asp?policy_no=03.70.02
Disability Disclosure Statement: Any student who has a need for accommodation based on the
impact of a disability should contact the instructor privately to discuss the specific situation as soon as
possible. Please contact Disability Resources and Services to coordinate reasonable accommodations for
students with documented disabilities (http://www.temple.edu/studentaffairs/disability/index.html).
Temple University Plagiarism Policy: The university prohibits plagiarism and academic cheating. The
university defines plagiarism as “…the unacknowledged use of another person's labor, another person's
ideas, another person's words, another person's assistance…Failure to cite borrowed material
constitutes plagiarism. Undocumented use of materials from the World Wide Web is plagiarism.”
Academic cheating includes “…falsifying data; submitting, without the instructor's approval, work in one
course which was done for another; helping others to plagiarize or cheat from one's own or another's
work; or actually doing the work of another person.” The penalty for plagiarism and academic cheating
may range from a failing grade in a specific assignment to suspension/expulsion from the university. The
instructor reserves the right to use turnitin.com, or similar tools built into Blackboard, to determine if
papers have been plagiarized.
Week
Topic
Videos / Exercises
1
Intro. to Creativity & Innovation
Video: Where good ideas come from
2
Opportunity Recognition
Trends
Types of Innovation
3
Value & Design Thinking
Exercise: Brainstorming Warm-up
Exercise: Trends Brainstorm
Exercise: Trend Impact Brainstorm
Video: IDEO Shopping Cart Redesign
Exercise: SCAMPER Class Practice
Exercise: Consumer Job Mapping
Video: Terracycle
Exercise: Convert Product to Service
Exercise: Quick Screen of Ideas
Exercise: Assumption Busting
Exercise: Trends Mini-JAM Warm-up
Exercise: Laundry Mat Prob. Reform.
Video: 5 Whys Example – Park Service
Exercise: Root Cause Analysis
Exercise: Random Word Technique
Exercise: Product / Service Inn. JAM
Exercise: Map Value Chain Activities
Exercise: Map an Industry Ecosystem
Video: Seven Wastes
Exercise: Wastes in Current / Past Jobs
Video: Gary Hamel Mgmt Innovation
Exercise: Mgmt Systems Past Jobs
Video: Business Model Canvas Intro.
Exercise: Netflix Canvas Practice
Exercise: Mapping a Company’s BMC
Video: Open Source Hardware
Video: Google X Games
Exercise: Changing Business Models
Exercise: Process / Mgmt Inn. JAM
Exercise: MindMapping This Course
Videos: Kickstarter Examples
Video: Honest Tea
Guest: Chris Rabb “Local Impact”
Exercise: Finding Your Purpose I
Exercise: Business Model JAM
Video: Starting with Why
Guest: Temple TV on “Story Telling”
Exercise: Finding Your Purpose II
Video: Frugal Innovation
Videos: GE VScan / Self-Adj. Eyewear
Exercise: Quick Screen Kickstarter Ideas
Exercise: Acceptance Finding
4
Product & Service Innovation
5
Creative Problem Solving Process
Organizational Creativity
6
Value Chains & Ecosystems
7
Process / Management
Innovation
8
Business Model Generation
“Canvas”
9
Business Model Generation
“Patterns”
10
Business Model Generation
“Design”
11
Triple Bottom Line / Social Impact
12
Getting to Why / Making Meaning
13
Emerging Market Innovation
14
15
Innovation Adoption / Diffusion
Readings
- Syllabus
- 10 Types of Innovation – Doblin
Assignments Due
- The Discipline of Innovation – HBR
- PEST Analysis – MindTools
[2-3 Forum posts due
every week from Week
2 to Week 14]
- Design Thinking – HBR
- SCAMPER – Improving Products and Services – MindTools
Trends Analysis Group
Project Submit
- Discovering Unk Unks – SMR
- Value plus Simplicity equals Success – Entrepreneur
SCAMPER HW
** Bring Short Desc. of
Tentative Product /
Service Idea(s) to class
- The Weird Rules of Creativity – HRB
- Root Cause Analysis / Cause & Effect Analysis – MindTools
Product / Service
Innovation Submit
- Profit Pools- A Fresh Look at Strategy – HBR
- Value Chain Analysis – MindTools
Product / Service
Innovation Official
Reviews
- The why, what, & how of management innovation – HBR
Product / Service
Innovation Revised
Submit
- Book: Business Model Generation - Part 1 “Canvas”
- Book: Business Model Generation - Part 2 “Patterns”
Process / Mgmt
Innovation Submit
- Book: Business Model Generation - Part 3 “Design”
Process / Mgmt Inn.
Official Reviews
- Creating Shared Value – HBR
Business Model
Innovation Submit
- How great companies think differently – HBR
Business Model Official
Reviews
- How GE is Disrupting Itself – HBR
- Summary of Diffusion of Innovations – Creative Commons
Kickstarter Submit