INNOVATING THE KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT COURSE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WEST BOHEMIA 1

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1 INNOVATING THE KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT COURSE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WEST BOHEMIA 1 Jiří Vacek Abstract The paper briefly summarizes the innovation of the Knowledge and Innovation Management course at the University of West Bohemia that was supported by the Operational Programme Education for Competitiveness. The course introduces students in their last year of study into the basics of those two closely related disciplines and prepares them for work in management positions in innovative companies. In their future positions, they can built on this basis and further develop their knowledge base, skills and competencies contributing to innovativeness and competitiveness of their future employers, or even to start their own start-up. The course is supported by the Courseware platform of the UWB and two e-books, one in Czech and the other in English language. The body of knowledge integrated in the course was also used in preparation of several trainings focused on managers of small and medium size businesses. Key words: innovation, knowledge, management, university courses, trainings for SMEs managers JEL Code: M10, M15 Introduction Innovation, knowledge, entrepreneurship, leadership and management became very frequent words in business, academy and even politics; however, with exception of management, they still appear very rarely in curricula of Czech universities. Our first attempt to introduce the course on innovation management in standard study programme Business Administration and Management at the University of Bohemia Faculty of Economics started in 1998, when we published teaching notes Vacek, Vostracký, Skalický (1998). As by then we missed in our 1 The paper preparation was supported by OPVK project SYPROM Innovation of Continued Study Programme with Emphasize on process and project management (Inovace navazujícího studijního programu s důrazem na procesní a projektové řízení), CZ.1.07/2.2.00/

2 study programmes courses focused on soft skills, we included into the course also lessons on creativity, team work and conflict resolution and called this mixture Integrated Innovation Management. Later on, with increasing importance of knowledge in economy and society, we supplemented our study programme by a separate course on knowledge management. With introduction of courses of our colleagues focused on psychology of work it was possible to eliminate some lessons formerly devoted to related disciplines. Operational Programme Education for Competitiveness allowed us to innovate existing study programmes and courses. As innovation and knowledge are closely related - there can hardly be any innovation without knowledge and the pure knowledge without innovation is only an academic issue we decided to integrate two formerly separate courses Integrated Innovation Management and Knowledge Management - into one, called Knowledge and Innovation Management. The course introduces students in their last year of study into the basics of those two closely related disciplines and prepares them for work in management positions in innovative companies. In their future jobs they have to enrich and internalize the acquired theoretical knowledge, learn from their successes and failures, combine rational and intuitive approaches to problem solving and further develop their knowledge base, skills and competencies contributing to innovativeness and competitiveness of their future employers, or even to start their own start-up (it is still not very common with our students, but even such things happen from time to time).. The course is obligatory for students of the last semester of the continued master studies. As one of the goals of the faculty is to develop language competencies of students, the KIM course was selected as one of those that will be included among the courses taught in English. Therefore, after innovating the Czech version of the course, we adapted it to the English version. 1 Course structure Course consists of 13 units briefly described in the text of this section. 1. Introduction. Basic concepts and models. Importance of innovations. This unit introduces basic types and categories of innovation based on 4P of innovation of Bessant, Tidd (2007) according to author s opinion the best available introductory text, moreover enriched by excellent website offering additional resources as presentations, self-assessment tests, case studies, etc.). The lesson also covers basic concepts of disruptive - Christensen (2003 ) - and open - Chesbrough (2006 ) -

3 innovation. The lesson is supplemented by several case studies of innovating companies both from the Czech Republic and the world. 2. Entrepreneurship and innovation. In this lesson we emphasize the close relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation, role of organizational and society culture that influences the risk attitude and tolerance to fair failures, the importance of business model, concepts of product and company life-cycles. 3. Financing innovation. Innovation as any other activity uses rare resources, among them one of the most important (and especially for start-up companies not easily available one) finance. Different phases of company development are financed from different resources and in this unit we give a brief account of them and their specifics and availability (or unavailability) in the Czech Republic. 4. Innovation impulses Innovation impulse is a starting point of any innovation. The impulses can come from many resources internal and external. The evaluation of impulses, their flow through the company and implementation must be properly managed. Some hints can be learned in this lesson. We introduce also the ideas of lead customers and rapid prototyping. 5. Innovation performance, innovation audit. Traditional financial reports give us a picture of the past performance of the company. However, what is more important is the future. In the Leonardo da Vinci project U-SME Innovation (2004) we developed the methodology and tool for company innovation potential assessment and implementation of innovation management in SMEs. This tool was piloted in cooperation with the Business Innovation Centre Plzeň, further developed in Vacík (2002) and later on used in several studies e.g. by the Tomáš Baťa university in Zlín and the Technical University Liberec. 6. Innovation marketing. As the mainstream marketing is taught in specific courses, we focus here only on issues related to innovation marketing, specifically on the Blue Ocean Strategy of Kim and Mauborgne (2005) 7. New product development, stage-gate process. Evaluation of risky projects. Project portfolio management.

4 This lesson is based on description of the stage-gate process and the new product development concepts of Cooper (2001). We introduce methods of risky project evaluation based on decision trees and real options as summarized in Vacek (2009). Project portfolio management is based on Cooper, Edget and Kleinschmidt (2001). 8. Introduction to knowledge management. Knowledge types and their transformation. As we already mentioned, knowledge is indispensable precondition of innovation. This unit introduces concepts of tacit and explicit knowledge and the SECI cycle of their transformation developed by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995 ) 9. Knowledge in a company. Knowledge in a company must be managed. Only then it can be converted into new products, embedded in processes and contribute to the company competitiveness. 10. Intellectual property, intellectual capital Concept of intellectual capital is based on RICARDIS (2006). Students are introduced into basic concepts of intellectual property protection, methods of intellectual capital assessment, search in patent databases and other tools. 11. Soft skills: creativity, team work, conflict resolution. Networking, EU programmes This unit summarizes concepts of creativity, tools supporting individual and team creativity (including TRIZ), team work and collaborative tools and conflict resolution. Many concepts for this unit were developed with support of the Leonardo da Vinci project InnoSkills (2013). At the end of the lesson students are informed about existing networks (EBN, Technology marketplace) and EU and national programmes for R&D&I support (7th Framework Program, CIP, Horizon 2020 and others, structural funds and operation programs, Grant agency, Technology Agency,...) 12. Conclusions. Review lesson The last unit is the review lesson followed by the final test. During the semester students work in small groups (2-3 students) on an essay focused on the issue of their choice related to the body of the course and present their work before the class. As students are interested not only in the theory but also in its application in practice, we usually invite 1-3 managers of innovating companies to share with students their practical

5 experience. These discussions are highly appreciated by students in their final evaluation of the course. 2 Basic resources The course is supported by the Courseware platform of the UWB and two e-books, one in Czech and the other in English language. Each chapter of the e-book is complemented by self-assessment tests giving students a chance to test their understanding of the matter presented in the chapter and possibly return to the issues in which they identify poorer understanding. Fig. 1: Introductory page of the KIM course at the UWB Courseware Conclusion Our experience shows that the KIM course is appreciated by the students as one of the more practically directed courses of their study programme. The course and study materials are permanently upgraded to reflect the current state of the knowledge. In the near future we will implement information about the programmes of the forthcoming EU planning period The English version of the course is offered also for ERASMUS students who come to study at our faculty.

6 The body of knowledge integrated in the course was used in preparation of several trainings focused on managers of small and medium size businesses and the compacted version of the course is taught at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Acknowledgment The development of the KIM course was supported by the following projects co-financed by the European Social Fund and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports: ZIVDIG Product Life-cycle in the digital enterprise environment (Životní cyklus výrobku v prostředí digitálního podniku), CZ.1.07/2.2.00/ SYPROM Innovation of Continued Study Programme with Emphasize on process and project management (Inovace navazujícího studijního programu s důrazem na procesní a projektové řízení), CZ.1.07/2.2.00/ Many ideas implemented into the course were developed with support of the following two Leonardo davinci projects funded by the EU Lifelong Learning Programme: U-SME Innovation: DESIGN OF A MODEL FOR JOINT UNIVERSITY - ENTERPRISE INNOVATION InnoSkills: INNOVATION SKILLS FOR SME S, Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation Project, LLP-LCV/TOI/08/481 References Bessant, J. R. and Joseph Tidd. Innovation and entrepreneurship. Chichester : John Wiley & Sons, Print Collison, Chris and Geoff Parcell. Learning to Fly (01), Capstone, Paperback, Print Chesbrough, Henry W. Open innovation : the new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Boston : Harvard Business School Press, Print Christensen, Clayton M., The innovator s dilemma : the revolutionary book that will changed the way you do business. New York : HarperCollins, Print Cooper, Robert G., Scott J. Edgett and Elko K. Kleinschmidt. Portfolio management for new products, 2 nd ed., Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, Print Cooper, Robert G. Winning at new products : accelerating the process from idea to launch, New York : Basic Books, Print InnoSkills: Innovation skills for SME s. Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation Project, LLP-LCV/TOI/08/481. Web <

7 Kim W. Chan and Renee Mauborgne. Blue ocean strategy. Harvard Business Review Press, Print Nonaka, I., Takeuchi, H., The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. Oxford University Press, USA, Print RICARDIS: Reporting intellectual capital to augment research, development and innovation in SMEs, Luxembourg, European Communities, 2006, EUR EN. Web , < > Tidd, Joseph; Bessant, J. R., Managing innovation : integrating technological, market and organizational change, Chichester : John Wiley & Sons Print U-SME Innovation. Leonardo da Vinci Project. Web < Vacek Jiří, Zdeněk Vostracký and Jiří Skalický. Integrovaný management inovací (Integrated innovation management). Plzeň: Nakladatelství ZČU, Print Vacek Jiří. Strukturování a hodnocení inovačních procesů (Structuring and evaluation of innovation processes). Habilitation work, University of West Bohemia, 2008 (not published) Vacík Emil. Měření výkonnosti firem a rozvojový potenciál (Evaluation of company performance and development potential). Ph.D. dissertation, VŠE Praha, 2002 (not published) Contact doc. Ing. Jiří Vacek, Ph.D. University of West Bohemia, Faculty of Economics Department of Business Administration and Management Univerzitní 8 vacekj@kpm.zcu.cu