Capstone: Innovation X

Catalog description

Successful companies operating in mature industries often embrace incremental change because it supports their current business model. Reluctant to spend money modifying their existing operations so they can make new things that will compete with their old things, these companies become complacent and stop innovating. But when a business makes only incremental changes, they find themselves on a path that gets narrower and narrower. Eventually, they reach the end of the path, and by then, their customers have forsaken them for a new offering that nobody saw coming. In cases where companies do take disruptive risks, it’s often because they’re backed into a corner and there’s no other choice. Companies simply cannot afford to wait until they get backed into a corner. They need to be consistently experimenting with bold moves, even at the very peak of their success. And that’s exactly what we teach you how to do in this course. "Capstone: Innovation X" provides you with the framework and motivation you need to discover and execute bold new ideas. You'll work with a small team to analyze an established business model, identify its shortcomings, and design strategies to “attack” the core products, processes, positioning, or paradigm (mental model). Your team will formulate a point of view on where the organization is vulnerable and describe how a competitor could exploit these weaknesses. The goal is to imagine ways of creating new value and wealth for an old business and industry.