Lecturers' zone - Protected area

Intstructors Manual - Introduction

Background

Innovation Management: Strategy and Implementation Using the Pentathlon Framework was written to meet the needs of MBA students following courses on the strategic management of innovation, or conducting in-company projects related to innovation management. The content of the book was also designed to be directly relevant to managers in both the service and manufacturing sectors. Specifically, it addresses how to develop and successfully implement an innovation strategy. The book provides both MBA students and reflective managers with selected tools and techniques and examples of good innovation management, which are based on the findings of the latest management research. The Pentathlon Framework has been used extensively in the last 7 years, in teaching several thousand managers and MBA students about innovation and it has always been very positively received. We have found that because the framework is simple, it allows students and managers to visualize the main elements of innovation management and decide how to take steps to improve performance. The analogy to sport, where top performance in the pentathlon requires mastery of five disciplines, has also helped make the framework easy to remember and emphasizes that managing innovation requires actions in five main areas and not just one or two.

This manual explains our approach to teaching innovation management and aims to give colleagues enough information to adapt the approaches and ideas to their own style. Innovation is a complex, constantly evolving subject and so it is difficult to teach effectively. Our personal experience is that it is useful for students and executives to first gain an overview of the different aspects of innovation and how they relate to each other, before moving to the myriad of tools and techniques available.

As we also know that teaching is very dependent on personal style, we have been parsimonious in the level of detail that we provide to teachers. Rather than being prescriptive, we want to share our approach, as opposed to providing an over-specified package. In this manual, we essentially treat the chapters of the book as modules and explain how they can be combined to construct teaching programmes, such as MBA electives, seminars for executives, or management courses for engineers.
                       

We both hugely enjoy teaching and wrote Innovation Management: Strategy and Implementation Using the Pentathlon Framework to accompany the courses, seminars and workshops that we regularly run. Hopefully, the information we share here will be useful in preparing effective sessions for different courses on innovation management. We wish you every success in teaching innovation management and welcome your comments and suggestions on both the book and supporting teaching material.

The Teaching ‘Mix’

The Pentathlon Framework allows us to structure our MBA and executive education seminars around the five elements. To explain the concepts, issues, and key tools and techniques associated with each element of the Pentathlon, we use a mix of teaching methods – including lectures, company examples, discussion, videos, case studies, practical exercises, and simulations. Our choice of the appropriate mix for each element is driven by teaching objectives and the audience. We aim to both have high participation levels and for the participants and ourselves to have a lot of fun (innovation should be a lively subject)!

Consider the topic of ‘ideas’: typically we would devote four hours to this on MBA courses (run as one or two sessions) and would start with a lecture. This would explain the importance of organizations generating customer-focused ideas for innovations and give an overview of the theory of creativity. Then we use a group-based creativity exercise that illustrates the concepts and gives students first-hand experience of creative problem-solving. Following this, we use a short lecture with videos illustrating leading-edge methods for understanding the needs of customers. In the last hour we find that a case study is an ideal way to consolidate the learning.

Managing innovation is context dependent and so there are no panaceas. This means that case studies are an ideal medium and we will give specific recommendations. Sometimes we use cases to highlight the issues, before moving to lectures that cover key tools and techniques for dealing with these issues. On other occasions, we will expect students and delegates to apply tools and techniques in their case analysis. In our courses we always use some of our own cases, as we find the discipline of case writing keeps our knowledge up to date. Sometimes case studies in isolation cannot achieve the teaching objectives and, for example, we have found that it is essential to use a management simulation to convey the intricacies of new product development.
Overall, we have found that selecting an effective teaching mix is fundamental. Therefore, this manual is focused on providing instructors with an overview of the available teaching methods and materials, from which appropriate mix can be selected.

Structure of this Instructors’ Manual

The supporting material that we have prepared for instructors is illustrated by Figure 1. It consists of this text document and a set of electronic files containing the suggested teaching slides. The text file explains possible structures for teaching courses and then gives teaching notes for each of the chapters of the book. The electronic files provide pre-prepared teaching slides for each of the chapters of the book.

Figure 1: Structure of the Instructors’ Manual and Supporting Files

Content of the Text File

The text file (this document) describes the suggested structure for three different courses and explains how these can be built in a modular fashion, using the chapters of the book. Teaching notes on each of the chapters are provided to enable instructors to build sessions and programmes on an appropriate mix of teaching methods. For the chapters, the Teaching Notes section provides:

1. An introduction to the issues involved in teaching the material.
2. Aims of the session.
3. Suggested discussion topics.
4. Suggested practical exercises.
5. Teaching cases.
6. Multimedia material.
7. Teaching slides.

Content of the Electronic Files

Each Chapter file contains the following:

1. Slides (PowerPoint) based on the book’s diagrams. Note that several of the slides have been ‘animated’, to make teaching explanations easier;
2. Slides based on the book’s tables;
3. Slides for each of the box cases;
4. Slides with discussion points for the main case studies.