Marketing of Innovation and High-Tech Products

Prof. Laura Cousins
Spring -- 1 credit
 
There is little disagreement with the idea that companies need innovation and companies spend enormous amounts of money developing new products and services.  Yet, by all accounts, some 40-90% of innovations fail in the market.  In this elective we examine the drivers of market adoption, taking the perspectives of both ‘objective reality´ and the ‘perceived reality´ of the players in the decision.  We then offer some suggestions for bringing innovations more successfully to market.

Specifically we explore the following:
- the nature of risk in marketing innovation relating to the innovation itself, the innovating company and intended consumer
- an added dimension of valuing by perceived value (rather than economic utility) where we explore the psychological factors inherent in the behavioral change required by the innovation, both from the perspective of the consumer and the developer
- the different market research, strategies, organization structure and new product development processes required according to the nature of product and behavior change; the course focus is on bringing products to market but in so far as other functions impact on the firm´s ability to do this successfully they are discussed in the course.

The focus of the course is on consumer product and service innovations.  We will devote more time to ‘new to the world´ innovation than to ‘new improved´ innovations.

The style of the course will be a lecture/discussion, class plenary discussion of the cases, exercises and a group project which will be presented at the end of the week.