Innovation, Learning and Change

This course focuses on organizational adaptation, organizations' absorptive capacity, and on organizational learning and change.

Organizational adaptation corrects imbalances and improves inefficient processes within an organization, and in how that organization works in its competitive environment.

Organizational absorptive capacity is "a firm's ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends". Antecedents are priorbased knowledge (knowledge stocks and knowledge flows) and communication. Organizational learning is a feature of adaptive organizations and stem in part from organizations' absorptive capacity.

Organizational adaptation, absorptive capacity and organizational learning's relevance for innovation theory form a natural focal point in this course.

Students will gain both an overview of the literature in innovation, learning and change in organizations, as well as more in depth knowledge in key areas. Successful students will achieve sufficient mastery in this area to be able to exploit this body of research in their own research projects, and to participate in international academic discourse.

The course is intended for PhD candidates at the Norwegian Research School in Innovation (NORSI).

This course is discussion based. This means that students are required to come prepared to discuss all the readings. Faculty will use introductory, intermittent and summary lectures to initiate, direct and lead the discussions of each topic in the course.