040034 KU Strategic Innovation (MA) (2021W)

Dear students: Please note that this course will use Zoom as video-conferencing tool for its digital sessions. Both for those sessions, which are already planned as digital ones, and in the case that the circumstances surrounding the current pandemic necessitate a fast switch from teaching in the lecture halls to purely online-teaching.
We strive to offer you online-sessions of the same quality as our regular sessions, and while there might be other video-conferencing tools available, Zoom is currently the only widely used one that offers the full range of functionality we need for this course. Zoom will allow us to conduct case-based online-sessions that very closely mirror our regular, highly interactive seminar sessions.
However, Zoom is hosted and stores data outside of the EU, namely on US servers. We are thus not able to guarantee the storage and use of your data in full accordance with the GDPR, and cannot hold Zoom accountable for it either. Therefore we ask that you keep this in mind when registering and participating in this course.
To inform yourself on how Zoom processes and uses personal data, you may want to have a look at the Zoom Privacy Statement here: https://zoom.us/privacy#_Toc44414842
If your concerns about Zoom’s data security prevent you from registering for our courses we are regretful, but understand that you may want to take other courses/pursue a different minor instead.

Wikipedia has outcompeted the Encyclopedia Britannica. Companies such as the Valve or Zappos do away with their traditional structure and successfully compete in fierce markets. Over the past decade, novel forms of organizing (NFOs) have disrupted traditional businesses and continue to challenge managers’ views on the viability of their strategies and the ways of re-structuring their own companies to cater to the demands of the millennial workforce. This class – blending insights from a decade’s research program with rich case-based illustrations – helps you master the following questions: what are novel forms of organizing at all? Why and how do they matter to strategists? Which type of employee wants to work inside an NFO and why? When and why should managers want to design one? What works (well)? Is flatter always better? How should I customize a flat structure to suit my company? What does it take to work team-based? And what really stands behind agility, DAOs, Holacracy, Scrum, WOC?
The goal is for students to develop a research-based understanding of why and how (novel) forms of organizing matter in strategy; understand their competitive implications, their inner workings, and their constraints in meeting corporate goals.

Please note that as of now, some sessions will be held offline, some will be held online. Closer information will follow before the course starts. Should the current situation not allow classroom teaching, the class will be moved online.