EGR 590 608 Managing Innovation of New High-Tech Products

3 Credit Hours

The purpose of this course is to cover the best practices and methods for creating and innovating new high-tech product ideas, for management of the design process, and for the management of the development and prototyping of new engineering products. This course if for engineering graduate students aspiring to be product managers, product designers and engineering managers. The course assumes technical competence in an area of expertise equivalent to a graduate engineering student, but the course emphasis is on the management of innovation and design.

The course covers the sources of new product ideas including customer feedback, technology evolution, technology brokering, scenario analysis, customer problem solving, focus groups, and group brainstorming. Next the design process will be addressed. A method known as “design thinking” will be covered in depth, and students will complete a project in an area of interest based on design thinking. The course will cover the methods of intellectual property protection for new products including patent, copyright, trade secret and trademarks. The management of the development of new products, including project management techniques, will also be covered. Several case studies of well-known technology products will be used to illustrate the course concepts.

This course is part of a sequence of three courses on the innovation, design, development, business planning, launch, marketing, and product management of engineering products. The other two courses are EGR 506 Managing New High-Tech Product Launches, and EGR 507, Life Cycle Product Management. Students may take any one, two or all of these courses, ideally in sequential order, however, they may be taken in any order convenient to the student’s program. The purpose of the three-course sequence is to survey and tech methods for managing product design and development, planning, launch and product management over the lifecycle for engineers, product managers, aspiring engineering managers and entrepreneurs. There is an entrepreneurial flavor to the course sequence, and students may use the course content to launch new products for their employers, or in some cases to work for a startup company or applied research institution.

Prerequisite

Graduate standing with an undergraduate technical degree.

Course Objectives

Upon completion of this course, students will:

• Be familiar with various methods for sourcing and ideating new product ideas
• Understand and be able to apply the principals of design thinking to generate new product concepts and prototypes
• Know the various methods of intellectual property protection and how to choose which methods to use
• Know how to assess the feasibility and cost of a new product development project
• Be familiar with how to generate product specifications, design and development plans
• Have the skills to manage the engineering design and development process
• Have built skills in communication sufficient to pitch for product development funding
• Become stronger engineering managers of engineering professionals
• Acquire the skills to manage the process of creating new technology products
• Have a working framework for the innovation and design of new technical products

Course Requirements

Expectations:

Your success in this class depends on a mix of learning methods including viewing video lectures, participating in discussion forums, engaging in a design thinking project with a small group, and preparing a project management plan and delivering a short presentation. You will need to provide a webcam and headset to record your presentation. You must complete the requirements under grading below.

Grading

Participation, based on forum participation		20%		Weeks 1-12
Multiple Choice Quizzes		20%		Due Week 5 and 10
Design Thinking Group Project		25%		Due Week 9
Project Management Plan (individual includes cost estimation)		25%		Due Week 12
Presentation: pitching for funding		10%		Due Week 14

Course Topics

• Sources of new product concepts
• Ideation, brainstorming, group think
• Methods of generating new approaches to invention and innovation
• Technology brokering, scenario analysis, technology evolution
• The “next adjacent possible” approach to technology evolution
• Literature mining, and methods of discovering new techniques to solve problems
• Solving customer problems and focus groups
• Competitive intelligence
• Technical feasibility assessment
• Intellectual property protection and proprietary value
• Patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secret
• Technology transfer
• The method of “design thinking” as a means to design new products
• Empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test stages of design thinking
• The concept of the “minimum viable product”
• Design specification
• Design thinking project
• Alpha, beta and market testing and customer feedback
• Approaches to the management of creative professionals
• Best practices for product development management
• Project management as applied to product development
• PERT and GANT charts and managing variances
• Cost estimation
• Seeking grants and SBIRs
• Pitching for project funding

Textbook

Solving Problems with Design Thinking: Ten Stories of What Works (Columbia Business School Publishing) Hardcover – September 24, 2013 by Jeanne Liedtka (Author), Andrew King (Author), Kevin Bennett (Author) $17

Design Thinking Methodology Book Paperback – December 14, 2016 by Emrah Yayici (Author) $10

Various web based resources (no cost)