COURSE NUMBER: MBA290K.1
COURSE TITLE: Innovation in Services and Business Models
UNITS OF CREDIT: 2
INSTRUCTOR: Henry Chesbrough
E-MAIL ADDRESS: chesbrou@haas.berkeley.edu
CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION: https://bspace.berkeley.edu/portal
MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Monday, 4:00 - 6:00PM
PREREQUISITE(S): None.
CLASS FORMAT: The class will have both cases and lectures
REQUIRED READINGS: We will use a course reader, plus
articles from the web.
BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Mixture of class participation, final
paper, possibly a smaller midterm project.
ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
This is a new course, not only within Haas, but within
academic campuses around the world. This course is an experiment to address a
burning issue in business today: most of the economic activity in developed
economies is services-based. Yet most of our knowledge about innovation is
based upon products, not services. A recent survey by the National Academies of
Engineering found that “the academic research enterprise has not focused on or
been organized to meet the needs of service businesses”.
This is not an abstract concern for Berkeley students. More
than 60% of the graduating class from Haas took jobs in knowledge-intensive,
service businesses. Looking further on in one’s career, more than 63% of the
INC. 500 companies in are services businesses. Service businesses represent the
future for the vast majority of Haas and MOT students.
Our course will examine services innovation. It will also
focus upon the business model in creating and managing innovation in services
businesses. We will also consider how product-based businesses can - or cannot
- transition to service-based businesses. During the course, we will have
outside visitors from companies involved in services innovation. Here are some
of the themes for the course:
1) Innovation in services is not the same process as
innovation in products. Services are intangible. They often are consumed as
they are delivered. In fact, the customer often co-creates the service
experience with the supplier.
2) Technology can enable new models of services businesses.
Information is both the key input and the key output for many services
businesses. Little wonder that more than 70% of information technology sold in
the United States is purchased by service firms. The selection, deployment and
management of technology in services is thus a
critical element for business success.
3) Business models are a key enabler and a key
differentiator for services businesses. We will be quite precise about defining
a business model, and explore a variety of methods for articulating, designing,
and managing business models in services. Technologies are emerging to help
model business processes in useful ways. They can enable a richer exploration
of alternative business models that might differentiate the business from
competitors.
4) Standards, architectures, and platforms are essential
tools to create leverage and scalability for services businesses. When services
businesses are largely people-based, their ability to grow depends on the
ability to hire and retain sufficiently talented people. If, however, a firm can
incorporate its knowledge so that others can build upon it via standards,
architectures and platforms, the services business can grow beyond the
constraints of its internal personnel.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: A popular Haas and MOT professor, Henry
Chesbrough is the author of Open Innovation: The New
Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology, published in 2003 by
Harvard Business School Press, which was named "One of the Best Business
Books of 2003" by Strategy & Business Magazine. Since publishing this
landmark work, Chesbrough has written two additional
books: Open Business Models (HBS Press, 2006), which received BusinessWeek’s
award of one of the 10 best books of the year, and Open Services Innovation (Jossey Bass, 2011), which extends open innovation into
services. He received his Ph.D. from Haas. Before joining academia, he worked
for ten years as a senior executive at Quantum Corporation in the disk drive
industry. Chesbrough's work examines the management
of innovation, with particular attention to new models of industrial R&D,
business model innovation, technology spin-offs, licensing in and licensing out
technology, corporate entrepreneurship, and corporate venture capital. His
academic research has been published in Research Policy, Industrial and
Corporate Change, Business History Review, and the Journal of Evolutionary
Economics. He has also published managerial articles in the Harvard Business
Review, California Management Review, and Sloan Management Review.