BZR822 Creativity, Innovation and Change

Credit points: 30

2.5 day residential school

Summary

This course is for managers who want to develop and promote imaginative, flexible and practical thought and action. It will enable you to understand how perception and style affect thought and action and give you a grasp of the principles underlying creative thinking and problem-solving. You will learn to understand organizational restructuring and renewal strategies and to use various processes and systems to develop ideas and manage innovation so you can help develop a more creative climate in your organization.

Description

This innovative and interdisciplinary MBA course helps managers to develop their perceptions, employ creative skills, sustain a creative climate at work, manage innovation and develop partnerships across organizational boundaries. It offers techniques and processes designed to help develop opportunities and manage innovation and change.

The overall aim of the course is to help managers develop and promote imaginative, flexible and practical thought and action by:

• Developing a more creative attitude in themselves and others.
• Improving their own and others' capacity to respond practically and creatively to problems and opportunities.
• Learning a variety of approaches designed to develop ideas, manage innovation and transfer knowledge (including scanning the environment, changing structures, improving systems, involving people, transforming your department).
• Being better placed to help establish an organizational climate in which creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation can grow.
• Understanding a variety of approaches to restructuring organizations (including the learning organization, the use of partnership, networks and self-organization).
• Appreciating the contextual nature of knowledge.

By the end of the course you should be able to:

• Understand how cognition, style and culture affect thought, action and policy.
• Be better placed to relate effectively to the way different people behave in organizations.
• Understand the principles underlying creative thinking and problem-solving.
• Use a range of tools, procedures and behaviours as aids to problem-solving, creative change and the management of innovation.
• Appreciate the impact of information technology on problem-solving, data access and networking, and have experience of appropriate IT packages.
• Help develop a more creative climate in your organization.
• Use a range of structures, processes and systems (such as idea screening, concurrent engineering, partnership) to help sustain innovation in your organization.
• Adapt and apply the processes and approaches taught to involve people, develop ideas, manage innovation, and share knowledge in a wide range of organizational settings and cultures.
• Initiate appropriate action towards organizational transformation and renewal.
• Appreciate the implications of environmental issues and organizations' role in social responsibility.

The course offers a range of materials from which you select for detailed study those most suited to your own needs and interests. It is divided into three main blocks:

Creativity and perception in management offers an introduction to creative approaches to management, focusing particularly on the individual level of creativity. It examines how cognition, perception, style and role affect managers' thought and behaviour, and traces the influence of cultural and historical values on personal, organizational and global development. It also discusses ways in which organizations can develop sustainably and responsibly, and introduces complexity. A personality inventory and an organizational climate inventory are included. This block has a psychological orientation.

Managing problems creatively looks at ways in which managers and teams can approach problem management creatively. It describes a variety of problem-solving approaches and frameworks such as staged problem-solving, orchestrated debate, mapping, and narrative approaches such as storytelling and the use of imagery and metaphor. It presents principles that underlie creative problem management. The associated Technique Library (available in print, web and CD-ROM versions) includes over 150 creativity, problem exploration, mapping, idea generation, decision-making and action planning techniques. There is an electronic technique selector to help you choose between them.

Innovation, climate and change deals with ways of managing innovation, developing a creative organizational climate, and attempts to transform or revitalize organizations. It shows how ideas about innovation have changed, and introduces ways of scanning the environment, such as scenario building and benchmarking. It looks at organizational structures and systems designed to help manage innovation (including idea elicitation and screening systems, ways of sharing knowledge and involving people), and discusses entrepreneurship, climate and culture change. Finally the block compares various approaches to organizational change and restructuring, including the quality movement, empowerment, reengineering, the learning organization, partnership and self-organization.

An accompanying reader and website give you opportunities to follow up the parts of the course that are most relevant to your situation. The course as a whole has a slightly maverick quality.

Vocational relevance

BZR822 is related to the N/SVQ in strategic management at Level 5.

Entry

You can take this course on its own, or as part of our MBA programme. To register for the MBA you must, normally, have a degree or equivalent professional qualification, and you should be aged at least 25 and have significant experience at middle management level or higher. If you are taking the course as part of an MBA we expect you to have already completed Stage 1 and the compulsory Stage 2 course BZR820 Strategy. If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please seek advice from your Regional Centre.

What's included

Course books, other printed materials, audio and video cassettes, CD-ROMs, conferencing facilities, website, downloaded software.

You will need

Audio and video cassette players; computer as described in our Personal Computing leaflet and a subscription to an internet service provider.

Residential school

There is a half-week residential school designed to teach creative approaches to problem-solving, ways of accessing tacit knowledge and group process skills. The cost of the school is included in the course fee.

Support from your tutor

You will have a tutor who will help you with the course material and mark and comment on your written work, and whom you can ask for advice and guidance. You can contact your tutor by telephone, correspondence and e-mail. We may be able to offer group tutorials or day-schools that you are encouraged, but not obliged, to attend. Where tutorials are held will depend on the distribution of students taking the course. Ask your Regional Centre if you need to know more before you decide whether to register. Your Regional Centre will provide you with both general and certain specialist help with your studies.

Assessment

There are three tutor-marked assignments and an examination.