040034 KU Strategic Innovation (MA) (2023W)

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 this course is planned as an in-person, offline course.