On March 24th afternoon, it was early spring in the tranquil park, with the background of blue sky, the grass was gradually turning from yellow to green, and several strains of magnolia flowers were blooming. A course of “Innovation Management of New Ventures" was in progress, our energetic teacher, Li Yilan, was in the great outdoors with two dozen teachers and students of Beijing University, learning and playing.
"Innovation Management of New Ventures " is a class being opened in this spring semester by the School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Peking University, and being conducted by Professor Li Yilan, the curriculum designer and speaker. To stimulate the creativity of students, and to improve analytical ability and innovation management skills, we added a number of innovative teaching methods to this course. This allowed us to effectively guide students to study concepts such as generating ideas, to identifying creative opportunities and forming business concepts, and then transforming them into a feasible venture prototype. Finally, by allowing students to apply their knowledge, we were able to achieve our teaching objectives.
Today is the 5th class of this course. In order to contact the theory, the first phase of "value exploration" to the second phase of the "value discovery", we specially designed an "interactive game" outdoors where students could experience being a part of an entrepreneurial team to find the value of innovation process in a customized situation game. As soon as the class started, we let our six virtual entrepreneurial teams show what they had learned in the first phase of the course, and they then participated in interactive games.
The situation of our game was that there were six simultaneous entrepreneurial companies on the market, and each company had four partners. After producing innovative concepts in the first stage, they had to gather useful information. As a basis of feasibility analysis for concepts, thirty consecutive image numbers represented 30 important pieces of market information in this game.
Number pictures existed in the market in varying forms, these entrepreneurial teams had to use innovative thinking and synergy to complete the task of collecting information in 60 seconds. Each team had three chances, but if they could not complete it in three tries, they had to exit the entrepreneurial competition. The game ended when only one team successfully completed the task, and became the winner of the competition.
After the game, Professor Li awarded the successful entrepreneurial team with prizes, and invited each group to share their experience and reflection. Finally, Professor Li summarized the game, and she pointed out that "venture is not a game, and there is no chance to have a try first." Innovation is not just words, it must be done, and it must be down to earth. Entrepreneurial teams should have innovative ways of thinking, and be able to divide and execute work efficiently. She reminded the students who wanted to have a career in entrepreneurship that they should have a clear strategy before every action, and that they have a chance to get ahead after rigorous scientific research and sober analysis. Conversely, if a business team relied on luck, especially when they felt actions without clear thoughts were a good idea, they would get painful failures and lessons.
This game tested the entrepreneurial team’s decision-making and labor division in a limited time, thought outside the box, ability to take innovative thinking into consideration, ability to take innovative thinking into practice to form the team's competitive advantage. Professor Li said that every entrepreneurial team should learn from the game about how to manage time, use innovative thinking, use advantages of the individuals, and make the best decisions to organize and execute work effectively.
Outdoor classes are always so great.
Courses where students can play games are always so interesting.
During this course, we will continue learning innovative management theory systematically in this good and interesting class.
