Strategic Innovation Management

The core of the Strategic Innovation Management course is the processing of real case studies on site at partner companies. To this end, students are first taught the relevant content in four overarching fields of action derived from the paradigms of today's development environment. The first field of action "domain integration" deals with the development of purely mechanical products into cyber-physical products and data-based business models and the implications for strategic innovation management. In the development of innovative products, markets must be systematically exploited taking into account customer benefits. The field of action "market understanding" therefore deals with identifying latent customer needs and addressing them through the product range. Furthermore, development projects must be strategically structured so that optimal productivity is achieved through a combination of agile and plan-driven approaches. These challenges are addressed by the field of action "process design" that deals with the adaptation of procedures to framework conditions and uncertainties in the project. In addition, it is necessary to build up skills ranging from the implementation of initial prototypes to the efficient realisation of variants in production in order to enable the rapid industrialization and scaling of products. The field of action "product realisation" deals with the development and production side mapping of different maturity levels of the product. Finally, it is important to consider the digital transformation to increase innovation productivity and support cross-domain collaboration. The fourth field of action "domain integration" thus addresses the support of the cooperation of individual domains through developments of the digital transformation.

The four fields of action each fill the content of one of the four block courses. At the beginning, the relevant theoretical content for the field of action is taught. Afterwards, the students work on the contents in order to deepen them through practical application in the form of a continuous case study.
The number of participants is limited. A registration via RWTHonline is required.