Innovation Marketplace Green Entrepreneurship MSC/MBA (QAA 1,2,3,6)

Objective:

• To generate ideas to meet a brief
• To explore opportunities by evaluating work
• To evaluate innovations within a limited time frame
• To develop judgement in order to make decisions to complete the task

Introduction:

This surprisingly easy and fun classroom activity simulates an innovation marketplace. Students generate a topic-specific innovation and participate in amarketplace of ideas. The results demonstrate how and why the best innovations are not guaranteed market entry or success, emphasizing the human and social nature of entrepreneurial action. This fast paced marketplace activity works with large numbers of students, in open work spaces and can takes 10-20 minutes.

Activity:

Starting the activity:

The instructor should ask students to generate an innovation within a short time frame (2-5 minutes maximum). It is recommended that all students generate an innovation related to a familiar topic to facilitate comparison. A useful question, which may also provide valuable feedback to the instructor or the institution generally, is: "How could your student experience [in this class / at this university] be improved?" Additional guidance is suggested:

• Encourage students to be creative or provocative, but suggest that the innovation be within the realm of reality. For example, the student experience might be improved by receiving £1 million on completing the course, but such an outcome isn't realistic.
• Ask students to write the innovation down in one short sentence. This helps commit the student to the idea, which plays a key role in the simulation.
• Encourage students to come up with one idea, and reassure them it does not need to be "spectacular" if they are struggling. Running the marketplace: The instructor should ask all students to stand up. The instructor should read the rules and, if possible, display them on a screen. Students should be told that the activity runs for a limited time. Recommended marketplace times are: 10-25 students should take 5 minutes; 25-100 students takes 10 minutes; 100+ students will take 10-15 minutes.

Market Place Rules:

• Talk to anyone you want.
• End conversation with that person whenever you want.
• If someone's innovation is better than yours, for whatever reason, give your notecard/post-it to that person. You are now on that person's team. 
• An innovation must have at least one supporter, other than the inventor, to win

The instructor should explicitly initiate the activity, for example by saying "Go!" As the activity starts, the instructor may choose to prompt recalcitrant students to participate. In rare cases, students might attempt to share all their ideas by broadcasting them one at a time. It's best not to intervene, as these usually degrade to individual or small group conversations, but if it appears that true organization is emerging (e.g. sequential pitches and voting) the instructor might choose to break up organised activity by reminding them of the time limit or splitting the group in half.

Stopping the marketplace: The instructor should use good judgment to determine when to end the marketplace. Some small groups converge to a limited set of ideas quickly; large groups are unlikely to converge to only a few ideas within a reasonable time. The instructor should gain the attention of the students and ask them to stand where they are. Remind them that if student A has joined student B's team, then student A should give her notecard to student B. So some students should be holding numerous cards, some students should have their own card, and some students should not have a card.

The instructor should ask students without a card to sit down wherever is convenient. It generally improves student engagement to list some or all of the "winning" ideas. The instructor may choose to whittle down the set of "winning" ideas depending on the size of the class. For example, in a class with 100 students, there may be 50 students holding cards. The instructor might ask students to sit down if they have less than 2 cards, less than 3 cards, etc. until few enough remain to read out and record. The instructor should ask the remaining "winning" ideas to read out their ideas, and may choose to record them on a board/flipchart. For larger groups, it may be interesting to note how many supporters the top ideas had accrued.

All students may then be asked to sit down as convenient.

The instructor may choose to comment on the winning ideas, especially if some are impossible, unusually inventive, or otherwise noteworthy. The instructor should then ask: "Are we guaranteed that the best idea won?" In many cases, students may note the lack of ideation time. The instructor may choose to address this or not as an unresolvable challenge, since it is not possible to know whether more time would lead to better ideas.

Below are some of the potentially useful lessons from the exercise. Sophisticated student groups may develop some or all of the lessons with limited prompting. Suggested prompts are provided. It may be useful to discuss one general concept, identify its "academic" label, and then move on to the next. The discussion should, obviously, be tailored to the type and number of students (undergrad vs. graduate, technical vs. business

Concluding the activity: The instructor may remind students:

• Great ideas and innovations are drivers of technological and economic change.
• The best innovations are not guaranteed market success.
• The role of the entrepreneur is critical to the commercialization process, often generating unexpected or entirely unpredictable outcomes (George and Bock 2012).
• The entrepreneur does not have to be the same person as the inventor.
• Some drivers of commercialization success may be partly or entirely out of the inventor or entrepreneur's control.

The instructor may choose to collect all of the notecards, especially if the initiating question presents the potential for useful feedback. Instructors are encouraged to make the full set of ideas available to students after the activity for their own edification.

Impact:

Whilst some learners can be reluctant to engage initially, typically this is a highly engaging activity that builds confidence in decision making and evaluation. It works with large numbers and therefore can be a great exercise for students from different programmes to experience together.

Learner outcome:

This student reflection is shared by Alanna Ford, University of Edinburgh

I participated in the Innovation Marketplace a Green Entrepreneurship course in Spring 2013. There were about 25 other MBA and MSc students in the class. After being asked to generate concrete ideas for ways to improve University of Edinburgh's Business School, we were then prompted to spend 10 minutes to convince our fellow classmates to back our idea – and in turn abandon theirs. After writing our ideas on post-its, the classroom became abuzz with activity as students energetically spoke about their ideas, working to win over other people as quickly as possible.

While the exercise was playing out, several small clusters started forming. My idea for innovation was more client projects to root learning to the real world. My idea required quite a bit of background explanation, especially to students from Asia and Europe where universities emphasize more theory. Other students' ideas were simple and immediately relatable to anyone in the room. For instance, one student suggested that the school should provide free tea and coffee to all Business School students. I'll admit that it was hard for me to compete with such a straightforward and attractive idea. It didn't matter where you were from, you could understand in less than 15 seconds why that idea would benefit you.

Of course there were additional factors at play that determined which ideas got adopted. Some students were louder and more outgoing than others, making them more comfortable convincing their peers. For some of the more shy or quiet students, the process of having to instantly convince their peers in real time seem to make them uncomfortable (again, this could have been a cultural issue since we had people from Germany, South Africa, China, the US, etc represented in the room). For me personally, I liked sharing my idea with others because it was something I had been thinking about and discussing with some of my peers for months. As an outgoing American, I wasn't shy in trying to bring people on board and advocate for more applied learning in our curricula.

I found that the simulation was incredibly insightful for several reasons. First, providing a movement-based activity accommodated different learning styles and a definite break from the typical university learning environment where students often spend a lot of time sitting and listening rather than doing. Because I'd been personally involved in both promoting my own idea and having to listen to other people promote theirs, I could clearly relate to the challenges of getting consensus around an innovation. Secondly, the simulation became a tangible illustration for insights that apply to not only the classroom environment and the specific lesson at hand, but also to multiple areas of 'real' life. From the importance of effective communicationand initial context, to understanding network effects and opportunity recognition, I have continued to return to these ideas in the year since completingthe class. For instance, when launching a new business after graduating, I understood the importance of speaking with the right people in effective ways in order to gain new clients. I also knew that I needed to be in the optimum context for my industry, prompting me to move from Edinburgh to London where I could meet more like-minded and leading thinkers. I remembered these lessons watching an Edinburgh-based fashion app startup geared toward the American market fail; the founders were in the wrong place, with the wrong product, and the wrong time.

I think this activity could also serve career services departments of universities because many of the insights can be applied to a general job search.

Resources:

The activity may be conducted with no materials or setup; the use of post-its or notecards, a flipchart, chalkboard, or A/V setup are recommended. Post-its or notecards offer a record of the full set of innovations which may be of separate value.

Instructors should distribute one post-it note or notecard to each student and ensure that writing instruments are available. Similarly, instructors may prefer a learning space that facilitates ease of student movement, though key lessons may be gained in a space that restricts movement by some or many students. (In addition background on drivers of innovation adoption may be provided at the instructors discretion and pedagogical preference).

Bocks Market Place Resource Sheet – link

References:

https://sites.google.com/site/adamjbockentrep/

http://launchideas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/EEEJ-Issue-1.pdf

Author:

University of Edinburgh Business School 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9JS