Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Introduction

Please note
This course can´t be taken by students in Bachelor Programme in Entrepreneurship due to overlap with other courses in the program.

During recent years, growing awareness of the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship has developed, and this field is now one of the highest priorities of the Norwegian Government which has developed its "holistic innovation policy framework" formulated in the document "From Idea to value", in which it is declared that Norway is going to become "one of the most innovative countries of the world".

Innovation and entrepreneurship address basic processes of industrial evolution, which can take many forms in processes of developing new products and processes, starting up new firms or developing or restructuring existing firms, or for instance by organising collaboration with customers or clients. Basically, innovation and entrepreneurship are focusing on the same type of processes, however, with a tendency of innovation to be more focused on developing the functional aspects of products or processes, while entrepreneurship is more focused on starting up new ventures and commercialisation.

In this course we will take this as the point of departure, and discuss what innovation and entrepreneurship are, and analyze the importance of these phenomena and how they are materializing in "real" life, both in existing firms and in connection with the start-up of new firms

Course content

The course is organized in the following sequences:

• Models & Types of Innovation
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship Organization
• Proactive Links
• Generation of Innovations
• Search for & Selection of Opportunities
• Implementation, Development & Commercialisation of Innovations
• Strategic Leadership

The course will be supplemented by seminars consisting of a combination of case studies, exercises and discussion of key readings.