After successfully completing this module, students will be able to:
- Understand why new promising technologies and ideas are surrounded by uncertainties which needs to be systematically be explored to reduce uncertainties and reveal opportunities.
- Systematically explore promising technologies and ideas in a specific (business) context from a multidisciplinary point of view including a stakeholder analysis.
- Analyse the ethical, social, technological and business implications of a new idea/ technology through scenario analysis.
- Integrate and employ an interdisciplinary (theoretical) approach in exploring the possibilities of a new technology /idea.
- Analyse and account for stakeholders interest throughout the design thinking phases.
- Work collaboratively and in interdisciplinary settings with (student) teams and external partners.
- Able to demonstrate the potential impact of a solution for new technology and business development to a broader audience.
|
|
The course New Technology and Business Development (HT-HT M10) concentrates on the following question: how can new technology (including new ideas, products or services) turn into viable business opportunities?
Exploring strategies for new technology development through business development implies that one has a clear overview of the needs of future scenarios, customer needs, competing forces, intellectual property concerns and present/future structure of a market. Knowing this does not only reduce the uncertainties associated with the development of new technology but also the decision to continue and craft a business model based on a viable value proposition. However, the development of new technology also implies dealing with structural, ethical and societal implications which are rarely taken into consideration by businesses when it comes to introducing new technological solutions. By social / ethical concerns is implied dealing with the controversies produced and surrounded by the new technology but also structural aspects such as path dependencies which makes it difficult to introduce new technological based solutions-even if society is better off. Thus, we also take into consideration the unintended consequences of new technology such as the ones nicely documented in the Netflix series Black Mirror. Hence, there is a need to look into these unintended consequences but also the taken for granted market practices, forces and path dependencies in relation to the existing technology in use to fully understand the value and hook ups of the new technological solutions.
This course combines knowledge in the field of Service dominant High-Tech marketing, Technology Management, Science & Technology including ethics in new technological and business development.
Course set up:
The basic set up of this course is that students work in teams and work on their “own” New Technology & Business Development challenge. These challenges are provided by companies and their role will be challenge provider. The lectures are designed to explain concepts in such a way that they can be applied to the challenge projects. Feedback will be given during tutorials and Q&A sessions. The group assignment is based on Challenge Based Learning pedagogy which means that students are very much in the driver seat of their own learning process whereas the educators are the ones who take the role of coach rather than teachers. In other words, this modules combines subject knowledge and application of these fields with the development of enterprise skills which are very important to expand the students competence profile for future careers.
Both social science and engineering students should therefore know more about ways of valorising new technological driven ideas. This package aims to have undergraduate students from both programs meet and collaborate in a semester of project-based education activities that studies technology commercialization in M9 and technology exploitation strategies in M10.
This multi-disciplinary teaching approach is to have students explore each other's professional worlds in a corporate business context that is preparing them to interact in multi-disciplinary teams. Graduated engineers that continue their career in high-tech companies or technology research organisations (TROs) will need to understand and communicate with social science educated professionals to be effective in developing business, and the other way around. Developing this ability in undergraduate education will increase the chance of partnering with fellow (UT) students for business expertise in the case participants have real-life venturing aspirations during or soon after finishing their studies.
The package consists of two modules, starting with an introductory business game in M9 that sensitises (non-business) students for the dynamics of real-life business in a simulation program of almost one week. This is a quick way of making students aware of the knowledge they lack and need to master for operating in and communicating about (their) business. It also introduces the roles stakeholders and expert professionals play in developing a technology-based start-up into a successful company.
Module 10 is the advanced part of the package that builds on M9 in adding new subjects and real life challenges in which the stakes are high. of intellectual property management (IPM), Technology Management (TM) and marketing in a high-tech context (HTM).
|
 |
|