Advanced Seminar Innovation & Entrepreneurship: Innovation and Organization Design

The module prepares students for the scientific work in their master theses and provides them with deepening insights into academic literature on innovation, organization design, or strategic entrepreneurship. Besides writing a seminar paper, this involves presenting their final results. Accordingly, students in this seminar may choose from a broad range of topics around the development of new and established businesses, the strategies managers devise and execute including questions of positioning, and the organizational design choices they have to deal with. Potential areas questions of study may include: • Venture creation: How are new businesses created and how do they evolve? • Organization design: How do their structures develop and change? • Growth strategies: Are there different paths to consistent configurations and if yes, how do they differ from each other? • New forms of organizing: What role do supposedly more novel approaches to conducting business (ecosystems, crowdsourcing, open innovation…) or funding companies (incubators, crowdfunding…) play, when should be used, by whom, and how? • Role of environmental conditions: How does the business environment influence the decision- making of new or established ventures, such as through membership in categories?

Upon successful completion of this module, students will be able (1) to read and (2) understand academic literature on the topic of innovation, organization design, or strategic entrepreneurship. Furthermore, students are able (3) to create their own academic paper. Additionally, they will be able (4) to present their paper and (5) summarize their findings. Moreover, students learn how (6) to lead a academic discussion. Finally, they (7) understand the process of scientific publication.

The grading is based on a seminar paper (65% of grade) and a set of presentations (35% of grade). Drawing on the seminar paper (up to 5.000 words in the main text body), we will examinate the degree to which students are able to engage in an academic discussion in academic fields like innovation, organization design, or strategic entrepreneurship; define and structure a complex problem from that field, and describe and analyze it academically. Two presentations will further highlight whether students are able to present their findings comprehensively and precisely (seminar paper presentation: 15 minutes; 25% of total grade) and whether they are capable of applying and connecting their insights in the form of feedback on another seminar paper (discussion of another paper: 8 minutes; 10% of total grade). Across both presentations, we will further evaluate if students are available to communicate clearly and to perform professionally. Students will receive training on what constitutes all assessment elements as part of the seminar (see "learning outcomes," "content," and "teaching/learning methods").

Introductory courses on research methods (for example, "Empirical Research in Management and Economics").

The module consists of an introduction to scientific writing and several sessions about academic problem definition and solving, based on which students may select and continuously refine their topic. The topic choice will further be discussed in individual feedback meetings with the seminar instructors. Based on their topic, students will prepare their term paper which they will present at the end of the module. The students are continuously supervised by the instructors of the module. The module involves (group and/or) individual feedback sessions, where students can share their progress and receive feedback. The seminar topics may also be discussed after the final presentations.