Insegnamento a.a. 2026-2027

Despite the growing importance of innovation strategies and new product development, few companies have mastered the systematic identification, creation, and exploitation of innovation opportunities. Developing and delivering a new product is not an easy or intuitive process; it results from a set of structured and organized practices. This course aims to explore these practices and utilize the tools and techniques necessary for this purpose. The New Product Development and Open Innovation course is divided into two main parts.

- The first part offers integrated frameworks and tools to effectively design and manage innovation strategies, processes, and techniques. It provides conceptual tools to understand the nature and characteristics of various types of innovation and practical insights on designing and managing a new product (and service) development process, in a sustainable approach.

- The second part focuses on how digital environments can help companies open their boundaries and engage in open and collaborative innovation, involving multiple external partners in their new product development activities. Special attention is given to the role of users in enhancing innovation and the specific mechanisms that support their active involvement, such as user communities, and the new opportunities offered by the digital technologies, such as Virtual Knowledge Brokers, Platforms, and Open Source Systems.

• Understand new sources of value creation in a systematic manner through innovation, managing the growth in new markets and in existing businesses.
• Understand how to organize a new product (and service) development process and the different roles of the functions involved.
• Analyse the opportunities arising from the collaboration with the external players (customer, suppliers, supply network) at the different stages of the process (idea generation, technology development and introduction on the market).

• Understand and apply new product development techniques, on customer-driven innovation, design driven innovation or technology pushed innovation.
• Formulate a plan to improve the innovation process of a selected company thanks to external sources of innovation, distributed and collaborative innovation.
• Define which are the criteria to be considered in order to select innovative supplier in co-creation projects.
• Exploit the potentialities of new digital technologies to increase the productivity of the innovation process.

• Lectures
• Practical Exercises
• Collaborative Works / Assignments
• Competitions/Hackathons

• Classes are organized to stimulate active participation, support discussion, and clarify any doubts about the topics addressed during the course. The course follows an active-learning approach: students are expected to learn not only through lectures, but also by applying concepts in class, working with peers, discussing cases, and developing a project over time. For this reason, regular attendance, active engagement, and continuous collaboration with the assigned team are essential. Students who cannot attend classes regularly cannot be considered attending students.
• Some theoretical lectures will be delivered asynchronously through distance-learning materials. These preparatory lectures are intended to align students coming from different academic backgrounds and to introduce key concepts related to the innovation process and selected analytical tools. Students are required to complete these materials before coming to class, as in-class exercises, group activities, short tests, case discussions, and competitions will build directly on the theoretical concepts introduced asynchronously.
• To support continuous learning and fair collaboration, students are expected to keep up regularly with new materials and apply them progressively to their project work. 
• Exercises are designed to allow students to immediately apply theory to real or realistic cases, with the aim of improving products or services based on the voice of target customers. Some activities will be organized through ad hoc Excel files and will require short group presentations in class. Case studies and business examples will provide concrete applications of the topics discussed, either illustrated by the instructor or directly analyzed and discussed by students, following instructions provided during the course.
• The final group project offers students the opportunity to apply course concepts to a selected company and to conduct an in-depth analysis of new product development and open innovation issues. The project will be developed mainly in class, so that groups can receive guidance and tutoring from the instructor. All groups will present their final project on the last day of the course.
• In addition, a compulsory peer-review survey will be administered among members of the same group to discourage free-riding behavior and encourage responsible teamwork.
• Each student project presentation will also receive feedback from classmates through a form distributed in advance. This activity is intended to strengthen students’ ability to give and receive constructive peer feedback in a structured and protected learning environment.

The final grade is composed by:

1. Individual written examination (50% of the grade).
   • The individual written examination is closed-books and it consists of multiple choice questions. Multiple choices questions assess the knowledge of the key concepts explained during the course. 
2. intermediate group work project (15% of the grade).
   • The group work project evaluate the capability to apply and clearly communicate with the appropriate language the concepts learnt during the course to a specific selected case study.
3. final group project (30% of the grade)
4. in class feedback to groups (5% of the grade)

The final grade is 100% based on an individual written examination. The individual written examination is closed-books and it consists of multiple choice questions and some short essay questions.  Multiple choices questions  assess the knowledge of the key concepts explained during the course. Short essay questions evaluate the capability to summarize theorethical models an propose actions to a described specific situation.

Articles and slideset as indicated in blackboard.

Articles and slideset as indicated in blackboard. A selection of extra articles or book chapters will be indicated the first day of the course.