DG4S36 - Innovation Impact Lab 05 Dec 2019 - 31 Aug 2026 | Version 1

Associated Module Information

Module Code: DG4S36
Module Title: Innovation Impact Lab
Faculty: Faculty of Business and Creative Industries
Faculty Group: Fashion, Marketing and Photography
Faculty Sub Group: Fashion Marketing and Photography
Module Leader: Philip Harfield
Module Team: Steven Wright
First Intended Intake: SEP 2020 Final Year of Intake: 2025
Date Closed:
Credit Value: 20 Credit Level: 7
Language: English
Percentage of Module Taught in Welsh: 0
Equivalent Module:
HECOS codes: 100811 - creative management
HECOS Code Weighting: 100

Document Version Information

Version 1
Valid From 05 Dec 2019
Valid To 31 Aug 2026

Module Aims

The ‘Innovation Impact Lab’ module focuses on the transformative power of design. Positioning of the module prior to the final ‘Innovation Lead Project’ allows students to impart a maturing of their professional skills throughout the module.

Specific aims are:

  • To enable students to challenge incumbent innovation practices through the critical exploration of values-led innovation business models which respond to broader societal and sustainable development challenges
  • To develop understanding of approaches to the measurement, reporting and strategic management of environmental, social and economic impact
  • To build professional resources to negotiate disruptive and transformative innovation outcomes
  • To enable reflection on how the co-design of innovation proposals is based upon both accurate, complete data and valid in-complete insight. In doing so, provide leadership in the demonstration of methods to quantify impacts of complex innovation initiatives (i.e. social impact evaluation methods)
  • To build foundations for the implementation of an ‘innovation lead project’, through the development of an innovation delivery rationale, plan and project delivery team

Content Summary

In this module, students will explore ‘design intent’ and reflect the governance, commercial pressures and user behaviours as barriers and enablers of innovation. The lab philosophy of co-design will be acted on through external curation of activities. Consensus between stakeholders will be tested in order to gain support for proposed interventions.

Though designing new value propositions students will uncover opportunities for organisations to ‘redefine success in business’, through being responsive to environmental and social innovation drivers.

Content will synthesise thinking to support the initiation of a real innovation project, thus providing the rationale and momentum for the subsequent ‘innovation lead project’. In developing a Responsible Value Proposition students will engage a ‘how to innovate for change’ dialogue. Designing business experiences to make consumers looking past price through values aligned products and services.

Students will critically reflect on multi-stakeholder societal challenges and business contexts such as consumption, environmental narratives and ethical supply chains.

Activities will include:

  • Approaches to creative leadership and building purpose-driven organisational cultures and values which engage staff and customers
  • Designing new value propositions in answering unmet needs of customers and broader society
  • Strategic and future oriented decision making
  • Identify the stakeholders, finding connections and trusted participants through exploring shared motivations and cultures
  • Negotiating collaborative impact through aligning goals, actions and outcomes in your innovation ecosystem
  • Implementing methods to manage group activities and accountability to help drive momentum towards goals
  • Consideration of risk, cost benefit, resourcing and funding opportunities as recognised within a feasibility study

Learning and Teaching Methods

Activity Type Hours
Seminar 24
Tutorial 4
External visits 4
Independent Study 100
Directed Study 60
Groupwork 8
Total Hours Selected 200

Learning Outcomes

# Learning Outcome
LO1 Interpret social and environmental drivers in respect of commercial objectives through communicating externalities and whole system approaches
LO2 Critically identify and communicate any biases and assumptions inherent in the effective communication of innovation proposition

Module Requisites

N/A

Assessment Criteria

Assessment Category Assessment Type Description Duration Word Count Weight (%) Best of? Pass Mark
Synchronous Onsite Oral Assessment Presentation (Synchronous Onsite) 1 Pitching Innovation Impacts: Present the multi-level impacts (macro, mezzo, micro) associated with pitching the case for an innovative initiative. 0 2000 40 No 40
Asynchronous Assessment Portfolio 1 Testing Proposed Impact: Report on the delivery of a small-scale test of the impact proposed by an innovation initiative. 0 N/A 60 No 40

Assessment Matrix

Assessment Type Learning Outcomes
LO1 LO2
Presentation (Synchronous Onsite) 1
Portfolio 1

Reading List

Breuer, Henning & Lüdeke-Freund, Florian., 2017. Values-Based Innovation Management – Innovating by What We Care About. Palgrave Macmillan.

Ghosh, A., 2016. The great derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable. University of Chicago Press.

Heller, S., Vienne, V. & School of Visual Arts, 2003. Citizen designer: perspectives on design responsibility, New York: Allworth co-published with the School of Visual Arts.

Irwin, T., 2015. Transition design: A proposal for a new area of design practice, study, and research. Design and Culture, 7(2), 229-246.

Klein, N., 2014. This changes everything: capitalism vs. the climate, Simon and Schuster: New York.

Macnaghten, P., 2020. The making of responsible innovation /. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McDonough, W. Cradle to Cradle., 2010. Remaking the Way We Make Things. North Point Press. 658.5752 MCD

Stacey, R., 2012. Tools and techniques of leadership and management: meeting the challenge of complexity (pp. 9-22). New York, NY: Routledge. 658.4 ST

Tromp, N. & Hekkert, P., 2019. Designing for society: products and services for a better world,

Verganti, R., 2009. Design-driven innovation: Changing the rules of competition by radically innovating what things mean. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press. 658.514 VER