Lectures

Mandatory pre-class reading/viewing is indicated by (M)

#	Date	Focus	Resources
1	31-Aug Mon slides	Intro to the course,  Key questions explored,  Key assumptions	Video: Edison and his lab (1 min) and SRT file  Edison's method of innovation 3 axioms behind "8 steps to innovation" framework  Has Apple lost its innovation superiority? (M)
2	1-Sep Tue slides	Innovation ecosystem, creative destruction,  strategy-innovation linkage, cognitive biases, Black Swan, dark side of innovation	The mother of all demos, SRI, 1968 (YouTube: 5 min) Essential Schumpeter: Creative destruction (2 min video) 12 Cognitive biases explained (10 min video) Apple, the world's best Unnovator Inside Apple Intelligence disaster (YouTube video: 15 min) Siri Co-founder Dag Kittlaus interview   How Apple just changed the entire industry (M1 chip) (video 26 min) Apple's China crisis: $1 trillion to Xi Jinping exposed (video 22 min) Adam Cheyer narrates Trend-Trigger framework in the interview (15:35)
3	7-Sep Mon slides	Technology Life Cycle, 5-Es of technology ecosystem, 2-loops of innovation "8 steps to innovation" book, chapter 1, pg 16-21 Diffusion of innovations, "8 steps to innovation", pg 143-144	PocketFM (M) Technology adoption life-cycle (wikipedia) Diffusion of innovation: adoption curve (4 min video) The two experimentation loops: Story of Watt-Boulton steam engine
4	8-Sep Tue slides	Guest Lecture by Dr. Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy, Prof IIT Madras and Co-Founder, ePlane Company	Founder's story: Prof. Satya Chakravarthy, The ePlane company (YouTube: 10 min)
5	14-Sep Mon slides	Challenge discovery and framing Pain-wave-waste, Framing a challenge, Metaphoric thinking   "8 steps to innovation" book, chapter 2, pg 62-83	case: Ather Energy (M) 3 sources of innovation: Pain, wave waste How to PIC a challenge area? A simple framework 3 characteristics of a good challenge statement 3 ways a metaphor helps in challenge framing Innovation: where to begin (3 min video)
6	15-Sep Tue slides	Problem-solving approaches, Systematic Inventive thinking	4 approaches to problem-solving 4 modes of problem-solving applied to "reducing student anxiety" Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT)
7	21-Sep Mon slides	Rapid prototyping Cost-impact matrix and prediction disability Feels-like prototype, Looks-like prototype, Works-like prototype Cost-impact matrix - an example For storyboard, check out this tool	Overcoming idea resistance: Apollo 13 story (M) Overcoming prediction disability: applying the Black Swan wisdom to idea selection (M) Feels-like, looks-like, works-like prototypes Before-and-after storyboard 2-minute idea presentation template
8	22-Sep Tue slides	Design of works-like experiment, Idea communication, and pitch design "8 steps to innovation" book, chapter 2, pg -	Dharksha Eco-solutions 3Cs of idea communication illustrated through Andrej Karpathy's LLM talk
9	28-Sep Mon slides	Guest Lecture by Dr. Arjun Arunachalam, Founder of VoxelGrids (making MRI machines)	How Tata, Vembu's Zoho saved India's first MRI machine maker from MNC shark
10	29-Sep Tue slides	Team presentations
11	12-Oct Mon slides	Building innovation stamina at an organization level 8-steps to innovation framework	3 things Mike Markkula did as a champion of "Apple Computer" idea Why does Einstein say "One max" person reading his theory will suffice? Learning from innovation dashboards visible through annual reports
12	13-Oct Tue slides	Improving innovation velocity Role of a champion Elephant-Rider model, Sustaining participation, Role of the "Get connected" manifesto "8 steps to innovation in action" presentation	case: Grossman-Patrick and how IBM entered the Internet business (M) Is Google 20 percent time same as "Right to experiment"?
13	19-Oct Mon slides	Role of innovation in moving up the value chain "8 steps to innovation" page 259-260 (3x3 matrix)	Poly Medicure case  Video review of Switch by Chip & Dan Heath Idea selection methods: balancing efficiency and accuracy
14	20-Oct Tue slides	How to get value from innovation? Complementary assets, Role of IPR "8 steps to innovation", pg 182-185	Raja's dilemma: To scale Li-ion or not to scale Li-ion? (M) 5-levels of innovation maturity 2 dimensions of innovation maturity: creativity, confidence and incubation effectiveness Defining characteristics of five levels of innovation maturity Jeff Bezos on type-1 vs type-2 decisions
15	2-Nov Mon slides	Guest lecture
16	3-Nov Tue slides	Real-win-worth it framework of innovation review,  Innovation vs complementary assets "8 steps to innovation", chapter 6	The challenge before Lisa Su in 2025 (M) Prof Rishikesha Krishnan on complementary assets (6 min video) Real-win-worth it, Harvard Business Review, Dec 2007
17	9-Nov Wed slides	Who-What-How of business model Innovation sandbox "8 steps to innovation", chapter 7, pg 198-204	How AMD's AI software helped it score the multi-billion dollar OpenAI deal, Forbes, Oct 2025
18	10-Nov Thu slides	How to create enablers for big bets? Part-2 Building platforms "8 steps to innovation", chapter 7, pg 198-204	Lego's sustainable brick: serious stuff or greenwashing? (case)
19	16-Nov Wed slides	How to build a margin of safety? Leap of faith assumption, Doing the last experiment first "8 steps to innovation", chapter 8 "My boulder problem" link	case: Philips's transformation from consumer electronics to health technology: Managing catastrophic risks How I climbed a 3000-foot vertical cliff - without ropes, TED talk by Alex Honnold, Oct 29, 2018 (M) 2 ways of learning to fail with comfort My 3 takeaways from Nassim Taleb's Antifragile
20	17-Nov Thu slides	Dark side of innovation, Organizational innovation	Haier case  Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands Why does Ishiguro say Stevens the butler is a monster?