Innovation in the digital economy

Digital innovation is a rapidly evolving field, linked to the latest evolution of consumer technology and trends in digital media. In this course, taught during fall 2017, I tried to help students articulate a value proposition and business strategies based on emerging digital trends in the digital economy. This was part of a master where students were trained both in digital production and in business innovation.

Syllabus

You can find here the syllabus I designed for this course. It required an overview of several aspects, and had to fit both a technical and a non-technical audience. The focus was therefore in understanding how each of these topics involved a certain disruption in the business model.

1. Big Data and Internet of Things

2. Big Data and Deep Learning

3. Virtual Reality: principles and use cases

4. Augmented Reality: principles and use cases

5. Medtech. Games as therapy

6. Games for Training and Fitness apps

7. Digital Art. Videomapings, Instalations and Digital content in Public Space

8. Multi-platform content. The TV and the companions screens

9. Digital Content. Webapps

10. Production processes. The cases of videogames and movies

11. Digital Cash. Blockchain and Fintech
12. The power of the Crowd. Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing

I do not include the materials because they are outdated.

Evaluation

Topics were introduced in pairs. For each topic I would start from an existing company or product, and then use this to introduce -to the extent possible- more general ideas on the domain. For each pair of topics, students were asked to do some market and product research. They were asked to show sufficient understanding of the topic to either identify and analyze a succesfull business case, or to prepare a production brief aligned with the topics addressed.