Overview
The purpose of this assessment is to provide you with an opportunity to apply your critical thinking skills (Links to an external site.) in the context of innovation management.
You are required to write an argumentative essay through the perspective of an innovation practitioner. In the essay, you will apply critical thinking skills to defend the value and benefits in application of formal learning such as obtained in this course to innovation management practices.
As students undertaking undergraduate study in an Australian University, you are expected to develop your critical thinking skills. This requires you to go beyond just describing and summarizing phenomena or criticizing phenomena to find their faults. It involves higher level thinking and reasoning skills to independently ‘analyse (break things down), evaluate (make judgements based on evidence) and synthesize or create (put parts together into a coherent whole)’ (RMIT University n.d). Critical thinking involves doing independent research, reading critically (questioning what you read with an open mind), analysing and evaluating your findings, developing your arguments based on solid evidence and synthesizing your arguments, and presenting them appropriately.
These skills will help you to become good researchers, independent thinkers and challenge established ideas and perspectives.
Reference:
RMIT University n.d., What is critical thinking?, RMIT University, viewed 1 February 2020,
Assessment Criteria
This assessment will measure your ability to:
Introduce the context, background, scope and purpose of your essay (7 marks)
Critically argue the factors related to the nexus among creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship (20 marks)
Critically argue the factors related to creativity and innovation at the individual and team level (20 marks)
Critically argue the factors related to creativity and innovation at the organisational level (20 marks)
Critically argue the factors related to innovation typologies (20 marks)
Synthesise and conclude your arguments and relate it back to the broader knowledge of the innovation management field (7 marks)
Cite appropriate resources using the Harvard /RMIT Harvard style (3 marks)
Present your arguments professionally (3 marks)
Learning Outcomes
The targeted Course Learning Outcomes for this assessment are:
CLO 1
Explain the relationship between creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship and how it impacts business growth, sustainability and wealth creation
CLO 2
Investigate factors that inhibit creativity in individuals and innovation within teams and organisations, and recommend strategies and tactics to encourage entrepreneurial behaviour
CLO 3
Identify and critique organisational models of innovation management
The targeted Program Learning Outcomes for this assessment are:
PLO 2
Integrate business knowledge, social intelligence and ethical decision-making in ways that are inclusive and culturally appropriate to produce outcomes that are impactful, sustainable and fair.
PLO 5
Coherently articulate technical and conceptual business knowledge that is both contemporary and interdisciplinary.
When you consider the practices of creativity and innovation within organisations, there are two opposing viewpoints:
Some managers believe that there is no place for learned concepts, models or theories. They argue that best results are gained from common sense, using resources such as intuition, instinct and improvisation. Innovation to them is just “done”, made up on the fly, and left to luck in a real-world context, outside of any classrooms or learning.
Serendipity does indeed play a part, yet in this course we believe that success requires much more than this.
We contend that innovators can benefit strongly from the application of learning that is acquired though formal study, which would include classrooms, textbook resources and structure. This approach not only equips innovators with knowledge and skills necessary to articulate their ideas using specialist terminology, it also allows them to confidently apply relevant concepts, models, theories, frameworks, and tools to their innovation challenge.
Task | Write an argumentative essay in which you critically support this second perspective. Defend the value that the application of formal learning similar to that obtained in this course can bring to innovation management practices. In your arguments, you are required to draw on specific examples of your learnings from each of the first four Modules of this course.
Select from each of the four modules at least one concept, model, theory, framework, or tool that you found particularly useful to support your arguments. Your arguments should apply specialist terminology and demonstrate relevance to, and potential impact on, contemporary creativity and innovation practices.
Therefore, do not simply reproduce the concepts, models and theories. In your arguments, critically analyse how innovation practitioners stand to benefit from implementing specialist concepts, models and theories e.g. what outcomes could an innovation practitioner expect to achieve through the application of their prior formal learning?
Where possible and appropriate, support your arguments with real-world corporate examples that have benefited from such implementation.
Important requirements:
Your chosen examples (concepts, models, theories, frameworks, or tools) must stem from the materials presented in the first four modules in this course. Do not include examples from elsewhere.
There is no upper limit to the number of examples you may wish to select from each module.
You should include at least one example of a theory and one example of a tool among your examples across the four modules.
Please be guided by the marking rubric when writing your essay. The four Canvas modules that you must cover each carries a heavy weighting (20%) in the assessment criteria.
The target audience for the assessment
The report is to be written for a specialist innovation manager, at a suitable professional level using specialised terms and concepts appropriate to them.
Structure of the argumentative academic essay
Your argumentative academic essay must include the following components:
Cover page (compulsory)
Please include the following detail on your cover page: Your full name and student number; Course title, Tutor name; Assignment 1: Argumentative essay; Tutorial #; Word count.
Introduction
You must include:
A general statement to provide context and background information.
A purpose statement that outlines the scope and structure of the essay.
A statement (argument) that identifies the topic and your position.
Argument
Your argumentative academic essay can include any number of paragraphs. Give each set of paragraphs that portray a specific topic a descriptive sub-heading and make it clear which sections relate to which course modules.
Each paragraph should:
describe one main idea only, supported by information and evidence from your research
follow the TEEL strategy (Links to an external site.) to ensure all elements of a good paragraph are included
relate back to the argument you posed in your introduction
In the paragraphs, you must include in-text citations of all scholarly work (i.e., journals, academic textbooks, e-books, etc.) and of non-scholarly work (i.e., company websites, newspaper articles, company videos, etc.) used. Non-scholarly work must be cited when real-world corporate examples are used to support your arguments.
Conclusion
Your conclusion should:
restate your position (for completeness sake)
summarise how the most important evidence supports this
show how your position is related to the broader body of knowledge of this field/topic
References
List all scholarly and non-scholarly work you have cited in the body of the essay in a Reference List.
The reference list is not included in the word count.
References should be in RMIT Harvard style (Links to an external site.) (or Harvard style if using Endnote).
The list should be in alphabetical order by family name.
The list should not be listed by numbers or bullet points.
A minimum of 5 references must be from scholarly work, the remainder can be non-scholarly work where real-world corporate examples are used.
Format
Professionally presented using Ariel or Calibri 12-point font, justified. Cover page must include the word count.
