BIOL40420: Innovation and Enterprise in Plant Biotechnology

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• To introduce students to the makor theories and models of innovation and product development.
• To provide training in how innvoation is managed in company settings, including how innovations are communicated across social systems.
• To introduce aspects of intellectual property (IP) and innovation management, including intellectual capital and IP strategies.
• To provide training in the critical evaluation of innovative technologies.
• To develop employability skills including strategic evaluation, team work, written and oral communication.
• To provide experience in critically appraising scientific peer reviewed literature.

• Enterprise development and innovation problem solving.
• The role of innovation in the evolution of new markets.
• Teamwork on real-life problem based innovation challenge.
• Invention and innovation, radical and incremental models of innovation.
• Assets of the firm and innovation management; Intellectual capital, and intellectual property strategies to gain competitive advantage from innovation.
• How to manage technological innovation within organisations; a review of the historical approaches to innovation and new product development.
• How to evaluate the commercialisation potential of plant biotechnology based research.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Have an advanced contextual knowledge of innovation as a key organisational process in modern companies, and how innovation can shape and determine new industries and markets.
• Have an advanced knowledge of how plant biotechnology based research can be translated into novel approaches and products.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Be able to critically evaluate the impact of innovation on organisational strategy.
• Be able to critically evaluate the commercialisation prospects of plant biotechnology based research.

Key Skills:

• Strategic thinking and planning of time and resources.
• Interpretation and understanding of management and scientific information from relevant sources (scientific publications, lectures, textbooks, online sources).
• Interpretation and evaluation of scientific, financial and market data.
• Team building and working, negotiation and consensus building.
• Communication: Presentation of scientific and business ideas to academic and non-academic audiences in oral/video and written formats.
• Critical analysis of the commercial potential of plant biotechnology laboratory based research.

• This module is designed to promote and foster creativity and enterprising skills building upon the knowledge acquired by students during their undergraduate degrees as well as subject specific knowledge fained through the other modules within the Plant Biotechnology Programme.
• The learning outcomes will be met through a series of lectures, seminar discussions, tutorials and presentations, together with guided reading.
• The assessment of the module, by two written assignments and a group presentation, is designed to: test the acquisition and articulation of knowledge in relation to innovation management in a business context, and potential for the commercial exploitation of plant biotechnology based research.

Formative assessments will comprise: Practise Group presentations (1), Outline of Research Project Translation Plan (2). Feedback and debriefing will be provided.

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