TBA
Course Name: New Product Development and Innovation Strategy: Creativity, Innovation, and Marketing
Time: TBA
Place: Hanken School of Business, Helsinki
Learning goal and objectives: The goal of this seminar is to introduce doctoral program students the breadth of new product development (NPD) and innovation strategy topics in the age of Artificial Intelligence by reading and discussing important articles in leading journals ranging from a historical to contemporary perspective. The domain of topics contained within NPD and innovation strategy is quite diverse as its interdisciplinary roots come from related fields including management, marketing, economics, psychology and sociology. You will be encouraged to explore areas beyond our formal readings in preparation of papers, discussion leadership and your presentation. You are encouraged to stay current in your reading in marketing, strategy, and related journals. By reading and discussing journal articles, students will learn to analyze the key ideas, identify the gaps in the literature, and develop their own research ideas toward original scholarly papers in NPD and innovation strategy. The ultimate goal of this class is to help you learn how to write “a research paper” that can be published in a premium journal.
• Even though students will not have enough time to conduct quantitative research, students are encouraged to build a research model that can be tested by quantitative research using survey, experiment, or archival data.
The objectives for this course are as follows:
• To understand important streams of new product development and innovation strategy research and its theoretical backgrounds from other disciplines such as economics, psychology, strategy, and organizational behavior.
• To develop and understand an in-depth understanding of process-oriented framework for NPD research in order to further develop research topics as an academic.
• To learn the importance of NPD-related knowledge management by acquiring and applying market information and data to develop a future research topics.
• To develop analytical skills needed to analyze the market information and data by examining and discussing empirical studies in product development and management.
• To develop and enhance business communication skills through preparation and presentation of NPD and innovation research ideas and paper as well as existing research papers.
Instruction and examination:
This Ph.D. seminar course includes 35 hours in a five-day intensive format. The final deliverables (e.g., final paper) is due two weeks after the class is completed.
The course consists of three parts: 1. Read articles in the pre-reading package, 2. Participate in lectures, presentations, discussions and critiques of articles, and group brainstorming for future research ideas, 3. Write a research proposal/theory paper as the examination of the course.
Our role as instructors is to set the stage by designing the seminar and leading the collective brainstorming for future research questions. We will start each class with sharing own insights into the specific theme for the class. We foresee our role as discussion facilitators, moderators, and evaluators of students’ written assignments. The beauty of this upper-level seminar is to discover what a given topic helps you develop your own research ideas through interactive process of criticizing and learning other scholars’ ideas from the readings, and sharing students’ own ideas with others in class.
Credits: 6 ECTs
Grading: 1-5
Grades will be a function of the following components:
• Class participation (10%):
• Article presentation/Summary of articles as an article pilot (25%)
• Future research ideas and directions by a co-pilot (10%)
• Research proposal and a short 5-minute presentation (10%)
• Literature Review (10%)
• Final paper (30%) and a short 7 minute presentation (5%)
1. Class participation (10%): This assessment will be based on consistent preparation via readings, and regular contributions to class discussion. Attending every class is strongly recommended if one wants to succeed in this course. We encourage students to actively participate in the class discussion even though you are not an article owner. We expect that student participation is based on careful reading of each of assigned articles. Please be ready to participate actively in the discussion as this really makes our learning lively and interactively.
2. Article presentation/Summary of articles (25%): As an article pilot, one is in charge of presenting an assigned article and providing a summary to other students before class. You also will serve to direct the group discussion and brainstorming for future research ideas after coming up with 2 discussion questions from the assigned reading.
3. Future research ideas and directions as a co-pilot (10%): As an article co-pilot, student needs to come up with at least 2 research questions to discuss in the class.
4. Research proposal and presentation (10%) (2-page max, single-spaced, 12-font). This short proposal includes (1) Title, (2) A quick review of current research in the form of synopsis of ~4 key articles (~2 sentences each), (3) Research motivation and gaps: what is missing from the current literature?, (4) Objective of the paper, (5) Research questions of the paper, (6) Potential contributions of the paper, and (7) a short reference. Each of you will do a 5-minute research proposal presentation with 10-minute critique.
5. Literature Review (10%) (4-page max, single-spaced, 12-font, soft and hard copy due): After an extensive literature review of about 8 papers related to the chosen research topic, one needs to write a “Theoretical Background and Literature Review” section. This section MUST include (1) explanation of theories to support research model and research questions, (2) explanation of streams of research that support the research model and research questions
6. Final paper (30%) and a short 7-minute presentation (5%): (12-font, 8-page, double-spaced paper excluding single-spaced abstract, figures, tables, and references). This final paper includes the refined version of (1) ~ (6) in the Research Proposal above, then must add refined literature review followed by the model and hypothesis development section, and implications and full references. The main section for this paper is the “model and hypothesis development section,” as other sections can be refined from previous reports. As you already have written other parts of the paper for the proposal, you can focus on writing this section as a priority.
• Final report specifically states the research problems you believe should be addressed by identifying the “independent” and “dependent variables” in the research model in figures. One should include the research model in a figure – as a picture worth thousand words.
• It should indicate what contribution to the marketing literature that would result from addressing your proposed topic/model/research hypotheses.
• Spell out the potential implications for academics and practitioners in the event this research question was addressed and your anticipated results were achieved
Prerequisites: Doctoral students in marketing and strategy/management.
Admittance: 25 students are admitted to the course
Please submit your application (motivation letter max 1 page, CV, and doctoral study research plan max 10 pages) by March 31st, 2024 to course coordinator. The participants will be selected and notified for the admission on the basis of KATAJA’s general guidelines by TBA
Instructors:
Subin Im, Ph.D.
Professor of Marketing
The Nations Professor, Department Head of Marketing and Entrepreneurship
University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cxS3KNkAAAAJ&hl=en
University Website: https://www.utc.edu/directory/dkc469-gary-w-rollins-college-of-business-subin-im/dkc469
Sanna-Katriina Asikainen, D.Sc. (Tech.)
Associate Professor of Marketing
School of Business, Aalto University
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.fi/citations?user=itegQgQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Course coordinator and contact information: Associate professor Sanna-Katriina Asikainen, Aalto University, Sanna-Katriina.Asikainen@aalto.fi
Bios:
Dr. Subin Im is a George Lester Nations Professor at Gary W. Rollins College of Business at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He is also a Department Head of Marketing and Entrepreneurship. He received his Ph. D. in marketing from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1999. He worked at Yonsei University, San Francisco State University, and the University of Washington, Tacoma. His primary scholarly interest includes the organizational aspects of innovation management, creativity and innovation, new product development for marketing strategy, and research methodology using multivariate statistical techniques. Dr. Im’s articles have appeared in Journal of Marketing, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Product Innovation Management, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of International Marketing, and Journal of Business Research, and Psychological Reports among others.
He has been selected for inclusion in Marquis’ Who’s Who in America s since 2006. He sits in the Editorial Boards of Journal of Product Innovation Management and Journal of Business Research. He has received numerous honors, including the Fulbright Award as well as the Presidential Award at San Francisco State University. Dr. Im worked professionally as a market researcher at the Hynix Semiconductor Inc. in Korea, and also as an international banking officer at California banks.
Dr. Sanna-Katriina Asikainen (Sanna Sundqvist) is Associate Professor of Marketing at Aalto University, Finland. During 2002-2020 she was Professor of International Marketing at School of Business and Management, LUT University, Finland. In the past, she has worked as a visiting scholar at Scancor, Stanford University, US, and a visiting professor at Loughborough University, UK.
Her research and teaching covers topics related to Innovations, Strategic Marketing and International Entrepreneurship, and she has published in scholarly journals, like Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, International Marketing Review, Industrial Marketing Management, and European Journal of Marketing. She has received many awards and honors for her research: Her article “Measuring inter-organizational trust-a critical review of the empirical research in 1990-2003” was nominated as the Top 25 Hottest Articles in Industrial Marketing Management. She was also a recipient of The Douglas C. Mackay Outstanding Paper Award in International Entrepreneurship. She was Highly Commended Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence in 2013 for the article “Strategic flexibilities and export performance: The moderating roles of export market-oriented behavior and the export environment” published in European Journal of Marketing. In addition, she has won several best paper awards from conferences. Her teaching has been awarded as the EPAS Accredited MIMM: Master’s in International Marketing Management programme where she teaches, was awarded the ‘Teaching achievement’ of the year 2013, by the Finnish Association of Business School Graduates (SEFE).