ENTR301 - Managing Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

Nil

Incompatible

MGMT311 Managing Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Teaching organisation

Unit rationale, description and aim

Innovation plays an essential role in entrepreneurial activities and in an ever increasingly complex and demanding business environment. Innovation is critically linked with for the development and sustainable growth of organisations, regions, and economies. Entrepreneurship involves identifying an opportunity and carry out innovations by making internal organisational changes, developing new technologies, discovering new sustainable products and developing new international markets that lead to prosperous businesses and create social value.Traditionally associated with new ventures and start-ups, entrepreneurial activities apply equally to the social sector organisations, government entities and large organisations. Specifically, entrepreneurship represents a strategic process that starts with individual development of concepts evolving from micro businesses to macro level innovation in corporations.

This unit will advance the theories and concepts learned in foundational management and entrepreneurship units and will apply them to the design and management of innovative new ventures and start-ups. The unit will explore the dimensions of new venture and start-up creation and growth to foster innovation. Moreover, it will examine both shareholder value approaches and the central social purpose of creating sustainable innovations that lead to social and economic conditions for shared value and greater overall societal.

This unit focuses on developing student's knowledge of innovation and entrepreneurial processes in different organisational and industry settings. The objective of this unit is to advance students' knowledge of managing the complex process of commercialising a new venture or start-up in different industries and how to address complex entrepreneurial problems.

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

LO1 - Identify the dynamics and apply models of innovation and entrepreneurship for a new business launch (GA4, GA5) 

LO2 - Elaborate on the core concepts underpinning entrepreneurship to support continuous organisational, social, personal and professional development (GA5, GA6) ) 

LO3 - Describe and evaluate the innovation cycle and suggest strategies for how it can be accelerated (GA5, GA9) 

LO4 - Demonstrate awareness of entrepreneurial responsibility to the common good, the environment and society within the prism of a local and global context (GA2, GA5)  

LO5 - Assess a range of the most cited entrepreneurial characteristics (GA5, GA8) 

Graduate attributes

GA2 - recognise their responsibility to the common good, the environment and society 

GA4 - think critically and reflectively 

GA5 - demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession 

GA6 - solve problems in a variety of settings taking local and international perspectives into account

GA8 - locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate information 

GA9 - demonstrate effective communication in oral and written English language and visual media 

Content

Topics will include: 

• Creating social innovation and sustainable value 
• Entrepreneurial leadership in innovative organisations 
• The innovation cycle 
• Entrepreneurial creativity and business planning 
• Local and global entrepreneurship and implications for the common good and society  
• the entrepreneurial ecosystem and its components  
• public sector and policy frameworks supporting entrepreneurship and innovation 
• micro business, family business and entrepreneurship 
• Entrepreneurship in the social sector 
• Team building and efficient communication 
• Building resilient Business Models 

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

This unit adopts active, case study, problem-based and experiential learning approaches simultaneously to help students in acquiring and integration of knowledge and skills related to identifying and solving complicated entrepreneurial problems. Students will be able to learn the application of theories and concepts underpinning innovation and entrepreneurial processes in a series of face-to-face workshops along with the materials (videos, texts, exercises, and cases) provided through the online learning platform. Each workshop includes mini-seminars focusing on the core theories and followed by practical exercises. Guest entrepreneurial experts will be invited as keynote speakers throughout the semester to share their practical experiences with students. In this blended mode of delivery, students- through individual and group (in-class) activities - will be able to develop and accumulate practical knowledge of innovation and entrepreneurship theories/concepts.  

Assessment strategy and rationale

To pass this unit, students are required to complete and submit three (3) graded assessment tasks and achieve an aggregate mark of at least 50%. Marking will be based on a rubric specifically developed to measure students’ level of achievement of the learning outcomes for each item of assessment. Students will also be awarded a final grade which signifies their overall achievement in the unit.  

The assessment strategy for this unit helps students develop their knowledge and skills in entrepreneurship and innovation to the point where they can present and defend a novel idea in the form of start-up/business proposal. Assessment 1 – Reflective essay. Students will present their knowledge of entrepreneurship and innovation theories in an essay. Assessment 2 – New venture pitch/presentation. Using knowledge acquired from assessment 1, students will further develop their understanding of the managerial aspects of entrepreneurship and innovation, theories and practice by analysing the external micro and macro business environments, develop an opportunity and utilising media, offer a new venture pitch that can capitalise the opportunity. Students will need to record an audio-visual presentation of their idea. Assessments 3 – New venture proposal in the format of a report. Write a detailed business proposal utilising the data, and facts and defend the viability the new venture proposal. 

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Required text 

Bessant, J.R & Tidd, J 2018, Entrepreneurship, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 978-1-119-22186-9  

Recommended references 

Bessant, J & Tidd, J 2015, Innovation and entrepreneurship, 3rd edn, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. 

Avolio Alecchi, BE & Marković, MR 2013, Women and entrepreneurship: female durability, persistence and intuition at work, Routledge, Farnham, England. 

Matthews, CH & Brueggeman, R 2015, Innovation and entrepreneurship: a competency framework, Routledge USA, New York. 

Hisrich, RD & Kearney, C 2013, Managing innovation and entrepreneurship, SAGE, Thousand Oaks, CA. 

Samson, D & Gloet, M 2015, Innovation and entrepreneurship: creating new value, Oxford University Press Australia, Melbourne. 

Further references 

Drucker, P 2015, Innovation and entrepreneurship, Routledge Classics, London. 

Kiesner, F. 2010, Creating entrepreneurs: making miracles happen, World Scientific Publishing Company, Singapore. 

Kshetri, N. 2014, Global entrepreneurship: environment and strategy, Routledge USA, New York. Tidd, J & Bessant, J 2014, Strategic innovation management, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. 

Owen, R, Bessant, J & Heintz, M 2013, (eds) Responsible innovation: managing the responsible emergence of science and innovation in society, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. 

Extended reading 

Breuer, H & Ldeke-Freund, F 2016, Values-based innovation: innovating by what we care about, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingtstoke, England. 

Erixon, F & Weigel, B 2016, The innovation illusion: how so little is created by so many working so hard, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. 

Halkias, D & Thurman, PW 2012, Entrepreneurship and sustainability: business solutions for poverty alleviation from around the world, Routledge, Farnham, England. 

McAdam, M 2014, Female entrepreneurship, Routledge USA, New York. 

Scarborough, N 2013, Essentials of entrepreneurship and small business management, Global Edition, Pearson Higher Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ. 

Terziovski, M (ed) 2009, Energizing management through global innovation and entrepreneurship research and practice, Routledge Taylor & Francis, New York. 

Journals 

Entrepreneurship Research Journal 

European Journal of Innovation Management 

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 

Industrial Marketing Management  

Innovation Policy and the Economy 

International Journal of Entrepreneurship Theory and Research 

Journal of Business Strategy  

Journal of Business Venturing 

Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation 

Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship 

Journal of Product Innovation Management  

Journal of Small Business Management 

Journal of Social Entrepreneurship 

Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal