innovation+
FOR DEANS, PROGRAMME DIRECTORS & HEADS OF SCHOOL

Every employer asks the same question.

Can your graduates do the work?

Innovation management, taught so the answer is yes.

Applied modules and live decision simulations where students run a venture under real pressure, make decisions that carry consequences, and meet the theory at the moment they need it. Undergraduate, graduate and executive cohorts.

IN SESSION
WHAT INSTITUTIONS ASK FOR

Three things institutions ask for. They are all the same thing.

Whether the graduate can actually do the job. Everything below follows from that.

Proof they can do the work

Skills the market needs, shown in work produced live, under pressure, and defended out loud. A model can help a student prepare for that. It cannot sit in the room for them.

Curriculum that stays current

Material that reflects how the work is actually done this year — not how it was done when the module was written.

Learning that adapts to the student

Mixed cohorts are the norm. The programme should meet a student with no numbers background and one with a decade of it, in the same room.

DEMONSTRATION

Some things have to be shown, not explained.

A physics lecturer drops a ball and a feather rather than describing gravity. This is the same move, for business. Set the ticket price for a small arts festival and watch the year play out.

ARTS FESTIVAL — YEAR ONE · SIMPLIFIED CLASSROOM MODEL

Set the ticket price. Keep it solvent.

Opening grant SAR 300,000 · fixed costs SAR 620,000 per year · SAR 22 cost per attendee · attendance falls as price rises.

ZERO CASH JAN DEC
80SAR
Attendance
Ticket revenue
Year-end cash
Lowest point
VERDICT

The lesson is the shape of the curve, not the number. Priced too low, the festival sells out and still fails, because every additional attendee carries a cost. Priced too high, attendance collapses. Between the two, where the year closes profitable, the curve still falls below the line around month seven — a solvent organisation without the cash to reach its own season. Working capital becomes something the student has run into, rather than something they have been told.

THE ROOM

Three parts. The third one is the product.

The scenario gets attention. The clock creates the pressure. But the reason anything changes is the debrief.

  1. 01 The scenario A situation with no clean answer. Incomplete information, on purpose.
  2. 02 The clock Decisions get made under time pressure, in front of each other — where a cohort finds out how it behaves rather than how it describes itself.
  3. 03 The debrief Every call replayed against what they knew at the time. Not a scoreboard — a mirror. This is the part they quote back a year later.
EXAMPLE MODULE — CORPORATE FINANCE

Fourteen weeks, eight learning outcomes, one model.

Each team builds a single financial model from week one and defends it in week fourteen. Every week adds a layer; nothing is discarded.

STRUCTURE

The module map

The full fourteen-week structure, with every week mapped to the learning outcomes it serves. Nothing is taught that isn't carrying an outcome.

CLASSROOM MECHANIC

The Relay

Accounting hands raw transactions to analysis. Analysis hands an interpretation to the board. The board makes one decision — then the decision is checked against the original data to find where meaning was lost in the handoff.

ASSESSMENT DESIGN

Defended in week fourteen

An oral defence before a mock investment committee. The model gets a team into the room; the questions decide the grade. A student who built it can answer them — and has something to say in an interview.

MIXED COHORTS

Built for uneven starting points

The same brief lands on a student who has never opened a spreadsheet and one who builds them for a living. Both leave with a model they can stand behind.

WEEK FOURTEEN

What a grade has to prove now.

When the output can be generated, marking the output stops telling anyone anything.

UNTIL RECENTLY
  • A report, submitted
  • Marked on the output
  • Written alone, off-site
  • Proves the work was handed in
IN THE DEFENCE
  • A model, defended
  • Marked on the answers
  • Questioned in the room, live
  • Proves the graduate can do the work

The model gets a team into the room. The questions decide the grade — and a student who built it has something to say in an interview.

ENGAGEMENTS

Four things a programme can commission.

A module taught. A curriculum handed over. A simulation run. An assessment rebuilt. Tell us the cohort and the term, and we will recommend the shape — and what it takes to have it ready for that intake.

Which module would your graduates name in an interview?
01

Deliver a module

Innovation management, taught to cohorts without a technical background.

  • Undergraduate, graduate and executive
  • Semester or intensive
  • In person or hybrid
Per cohort · Booked a term ahead
When was the sequence last rebuilt, rather than updated?
02

Design the curriculum

You hold the outcomes and the credits. We build the sequence, the materials and the assessment against them — and hand it over so your own faculty can run it.

  • Mapped week by week to your outcomes
  • Built for clarity, engagement and fairness
  • Train-the-trainer handover
Per programme · Built over one term · Yours afterwards
What does your cohort do the first time the plan fails?
03

Run a simulation

A single high-pressure session where teams run a venture under shocks. Drops into an existing module without rebuilding it.

  • Half-day or full-day
  • Works on a spreadsheet and a whiteboard
  • Structured debrief included
Per session · Bookable inside a running term
Does the grade tell an employer what the graduate can do?
04

Rebuild assessment

Rework how a programme measures understanding now that output can be generated. Defences, live builds, and work that has to be explained.

  • Assessment audit
  • Replacement instruments
  • Marking criteria and rubrics
Per programme · Fixed fee · In place before the next intake
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
The institution runs on workflows too.
Admissions, registry, accreditation evidence — the same diagnostic we run for large organisations finds where a faculty’s week goes, hands the production to a system, and leaves the decisions with your people.
See the build
BACKGROUND
PHD — INNOVATION MANAGEMENT EXECUTIVE MBA — ESSEC PARIS PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS GRADUATE & EXECUTIVE TEACHING ACROSS THE GCC
NEXT INTAKE

Let's talk about your next cohort.

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