Creativity and Innovation

Innovation and creativity are the key drivers of success in many industries today. They fuel the uptake of new technologies, the development of products and services and the formulation of strategies to secure competitive advantage. Truly innovative ideas can create new markets and boost a firm’s value or even transform its entire business model. But how do you propagate a culture of innovation? How do you tell which creative ideas are right for an organization? And how do you manage them effectively?

WHO SHOULD JOIN?
Students and professionals with an interest in creativity and innovation, especially from Business and Organization Studies, Economics, Social Sciences, Social Psychology, Healthcare, Media and Communication Studies, Engineering, Technology Management, Operations Management and Education. If you have doubts about your eligibility for the course, please let us know. Our courses are multi-disciplinary and therefore are open to students and professionals with a wide variety of backgrounds. 

COURSE CONTENT
Organized in collaboration with Cardiff University, Wales, this course guides you through the minefield of creativity and innovation in the corporate environment. By introducing new ways of perceiving, understanding and approaching these aspects of the business matrix, it shows how they can make a real difference to the organization, to the market and to the bottom line. 

The Creativity and Innovation course is taught by an international team with a strong management background as well as excellent academic credentials. Your lecturers boast ample real-life business experience through their consultancy work. Moreover, the course incorporates a unique hands-on assignment, the in-company boot camp, developed with and hosted by a corporate partner from the VU Amsterdam network.

The Netherlands became 9th in the 2016 Global Innovation Index, produced annually by Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of the course you will:

• Understand the role of innovation from a marketing strategy perspective.
• Understand innovation processes and the role of creativity within them.
• Understand and be able to apply the basics of design thinking.
• Be able to identify, analyse and explain an effective, creative concept leading to an innovation success.
• Be able to apply theoretical concepts, frameworks and models to cases, illustrations and examples.
• Understand individual and group creative processes.
• Be able to form an innovative team and you will understand the challenges inherent to its management.

COURSE EXCURSION
One-day on-site boot camp at a company. You will tackle an innovation challenge in a pressure-cooker situation, presenting your solutions to company executives at the end of the day.

COURSE READINGS
The course will use the book Managing Change, Creativity, & Innovation as a resource. However, the course will mostly draw upon article-based readings. Additional materials will include knowledge clips (video), company reports, and excecutive readings (popular press).  

Book reference: Dawson, Patrick and Constantine Andriopoulos (2014), Managing Change, Creativity, & Innovation, Sage Publications, London, England. Second Edition, ISBN: 978-1-4462-6721-9 (pbk) or ISBN 978-1-4462-6720-2.

STUDENT EXPERIENCE
"Since I am keen on developing my skills in creativity and innovation studies, I was especially interested in acquiring knowledge in design thinking and real-life business cases. Because of this, the boot camp at Muzus was the best place to learn more about strategic planning and innovation challenges. We learned that business creativity is a structured process demanding all your efforts and experience.Communication and interaction within the international team are priceless opportunities for ideas to emerge. We had a great day practicing the knowledge we gained through the course." -Alisa Galkina