Innovation for Business Growth and Competitive Advantage

Introduction

Please note that this is a preliminary course description. The final version will be published in June 2026.

Innovation for Business Growth and Competitive Advantage is a practice-oriented course that offers a strategic and interdisciplinary overview of the evolving roles of creativity, innovation, and change—three essential pillars for achieving competitive advantage and sustainable business growth. The course explores innovation not only as a source of novel ideas but as a core engine for driving market leadership, differentiation, and long-term value creation. The course will address two key questions: What defines effective creativity and innovation processes within organizations? How can leaders, teams, and organizations actively enable and accelerate these processes to remain competitive in fast-changing environments? Throughout the course, students will work on real-life case studies, hands-on activities, and tools drawn from the consulting and innovation management fields. They will critically examine internal and external barriers to innovation and develop the skills needed to foster cultures of creativity, agility, and growth. By doing so, they will be prepared to guide organizations through impactful innovation journeys that deliver strategic and measurable results.

Course content

• Outdoor Kick-off: Prototyping Possible Futures

This opening workshop takes place outdoors and is designed to activate the students’ creativity, collaboration, and systemic thinking from day one. Working in small teams, students respond to speculative future scenarios by creating symbolic prototypes and designing fictional organizations that tackle complex societal and environmental challenges. The exercise introduces key course themes—such as purpose-driven innovation, sustainability, systems thinking, and leadership for emergence—through embodied, playful, and reflective learning. It sets the tone for a transformative and participatory learning journey.

• Course Introduction
  In this opening session, students will be introduced to the course objectives, learning path, and central questions. The session will emphasize how creativity and innovation act as powerful tools to address business challenges, outpace competitors, and shape future-ready organizations.
• Unleashing Creativity: Processes and Practices
  This session explores the anatomy of creative processes within organizations. Through the case of Cirque du Soleil, students will analyze how creativity is structured and sustained in high-performance environments and reflect on the tension between control and flexibility in fostering innovation.
• Organizational Culture as Catalyst
  Organizational culture can either drive or block innovation. Using the “Cultures at Work: The Case of Home Care Service,” students will investigate how cultural dynamics influence a firm’s innovation capacity and how leaders can build cultures that support experimentation, accountability, and growth.
• People, Teams & Creative Energy
  This session focuses on individual and team-based creativity. Students will examine how diversity of thought, psychological safety, and design thinking contribute to high-impact collaboration and innovative outcomes in business teams.
• Innovation: From Incremental to Transformative
  Students will explore the spectrum of innovation types (incremental, disruptive, and radical) and their strategic implications. Through a comparative study of Airbnb vs. traditional hotels, students will analyze the strategic implications of different innovation types and their impact on industry dynamics.
• Leading Innovation in Complex Environments
  What does it take to lead innovation in fast-moving, high-stakes contexts? This session explores leadership approaches that foster innovation readiness, unlock collective intelligence, and support breakthrough thinking in organizations aiming to stay ahead of the curve.
• Designing for Innovation: Structures that Enable Change
  Students will examine how different organizational structures and governance models can enable or block innovation. Case discussions will address decentralization, agile teams, and fluid boundaries that support learning and creative adaptability.
• Navigating Complexity: From Silos to Systems
  This session introduces tools for understanding complexity in business environments. Students will analyze how unconventional ideas emerge and take root, and how firms can position themselves to lead rather than follow market transformations.
• Communicating Change: Stories that Shape Action
  How is innovation communicated? And how can communication enable or sabotage transformation? Students will explore the narrative, emotional, and strategic aspects of communication in times of change.
• Creative Workspace: Designing Environments for Innovation
  Space matters. This session explores how the physical and symbolic design of workspaces can stimulate (or stifle) creativity. Students will reflect on real-world examples and examine how space intersects with culture, well-being, and innovation
• Sustainable Innovation and Systems Thinking
  This session introduces systems thinking and its application to sustainable innovation. Students will learn how to view organizations as interconnected systems and explore how this perspective can inform innovative practices across organizational boundaries.
• Innovation Ecosystems: Collaboration Beyond the Firm
  Focusing on innovation networks and ecosystems, this session investigates how cross-sector collaboration drives sustainable value creation. Students will examine how actors can co-create, adapt, and scale innovation in fluid, interdependent systems.
• Project Lab & Final Reflections

In this capstone session, students will work on their group projects, applying the full arc of the course. The session will include peer feedback, a Q&A to clarify concepts before final assessments.