Organizing for Innovative Product Development
MIT's Sloan School of Management and Engineering Systems Division offer this graduate course on how organizations manage new product development. The syllabus covers technology transfer, the relationship between scientific research and applied technology, and the stages of the innovation process, from idea generation through commercialization. Materials available through MIT OpenCourseWare include the course syllabus, lecture topics, and reading assignments drawn from case studies and management literature on innovation. The course examines how firms structure teams, allocate resources, and manage the handoff between research labs and product engineering groups. It suits students interested in the organizational and managerial side of technical innovation rather than the engineering design itself. As with other MIT OCW offerings, there is no instructor interaction or certificate, but all posted course materials are free to use under a Creative Commons license.