Companies and Value-Sensitive Innovation

The minor focuses on a comprehensive and practical understanding of the innovation process and its ethical dimensions. Students will explore scientific theories and case studies, and address concrete business challenges so that they can apply their learning to real business situations. 
The focus of the minor programme is what we call value-sensitive innovation. Innovation is crucial for companies to stay competitive, and sometimes that means that societal values are overlooked. But “the choice should not be between pushing through an innovation despite justified concerns or foregoing its potential benefits” (VTI website). Therefore, the challenge is to understand the different values at play in the innovation process and what it takes to make innovation economically viable and also ethically acceptable. 

For example, customer demands as well as financial needs and opportunities form one set of values that inform the innovation process. But there are also  considerations regarding safety or security and risk, that is, the safety (or security) of the product(s) the company produces, but also the safety of the employees involved in the production process and environmental safety form another set of values that inform the innovation process. Understanding how these values may be in tension and how these should be resolved is the key ethical challenge of value-sensitive innovation. 

The main objectives of the minor are:

• To be able to understand and analyse the innovation process in existing companies, including its component parts and ethical significance.
• To be able to understand, analyse, and create requirement specifications from the perspectives of marketing, finance, strategy, and risk & safety.
• To be able to analyse and evaluate relations and tensions between requirements from an ethical perspective.
• To be able to apply knowledge about the innovation process, the different requirements, and their ethical aspects in a concrete business case.

• Ethics, Innovation and the Corporation (5 ECTS)
• Innovation Management (5 ECTS)
• Financing Innovation (5 ECTS)

For course descriptions, please visit the study guide. 

• Value Based Marketing (5 ECTS)
• Management of risks and safety (5 ECTS)
• Strategic management game (5 ECTS)

For course descriptions, please visit the study guide.

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