Hello all!
In class today we had a crash course reminder on everything we’ve covered this semester. Additionally, Professor Darwin shared his personal story and role model. I found the lesson about being a blessing and a service to people to be incredibly impactful and motivated.
For the blog today, please reflect on the semester and provide some learnings/insights that are outside of the key takeaways that Professor Darwin covered today.
It’s been great to work with you this semester. I essentially do this role for free and signed up to do it because I wanted a chance to connect with the broader Berkeley population and learn about an interesting topic. Please feel free to use me as a resource if there is ever anything I can do.
Thank you all for a wonderful semester!
Dan
I really appreciated how Professor Darwin opened up to our class this afternoon. I was moved by the story he told about his grandmother and realized that open innovation can make a large impact in any arena of life – its impacts are not limited to business alone.
Throughout the semester, we’ve talked about the inflows and outflows of knowledge that are necessary for businesses with open innovation systems. I’ve realized that this rings true for individual growth as well — we all share stories and life learnings that influence how others decide to innovate in their lives.
This semester, I’ve had the opportunity to meet many awesome individuals who have shed light on new perspectives by sharing their stories with me; I, too, have shared my experiences with others. It’s an eye-opening learning to realize that we all challenge one another to innovate and grow on a daily basis.
For me one of the main takeaways that the professor did not mention but that I found very inspiring.It is the the importance of partnership.A very big company can cooperate with a small one and both be enriched.It is a win-win situation.However,it is crucial that the big company does not try to control the activity of the small one during the cooperation,because that would kill innovation.
It was also very interesting to work in groups. We learned how to build in other´s peers ideas and reach a constructive consensus.
I have learned a lot in this class.Thank you !
Throughout this semester, I had the opportunity to was with a brilliant set of people. When my teammates and I first came together as the GE team, we were inspired by the diversity we each brought to the table. We had an exchange student from Spain, a graduate student who had travelled all over the world, an architect that loved business, and a business student that loved learning. Working with the GE group on an innovative (and risky) idea that challenged the status quo of how healthcare is provided today gave me a firsthand look of how challenging and commendable it is to innovate and disrupt the way we live life. It also gave me four new friends to be thankful for.
Professor Darwin was a constant source of encouragement and inspiration throughout the semester. When we were demotivated and felt like our business model was a failure, he would push us to rethink, redraw, and produce even better ideas to address the pains of our model. As he mentioned during class, open innovation takes place at the periphery of an organization, but when it is successful, it becomes the center of its own periphery.
Next Thursday, I look forward to being able to present all the research, hours, and hardwork we have put into our GE Telemedicine Open Innovation project. Hopefully the judges will enjoy it and be inspired by the possibilities it opens up.
This class was really helpful for me, specially because all of the concepts and contents I learnt are applicable on most areas. Besides all the key takeaways that professor Solomon mentioned in the last class, one of the main things I learnt is how to build a structured business model for any project. At the same time it was useful to see how the value of a great technology can’t be captured with a proper business model. I also found out how important is to be passionate about our own project in order to make things done the best way. Thank you for all the help Daniel.
It was truly enriching to hear Professor Darwin’s stories about his grandmother. The talks about goals that not only impact yourself, but also others inspired me to think outside of the business mindset. At the end of the day, it is important to follow through with personal life goals.
A major takeaway from this course was the ability to effectively work in groups. In many of my other classes I have group projects that last for two to three weeks, however, in this class the group work is for the entire semester. Through this class I was able to really listen to all the great input my fellow team members had to offer. The constant group meetings allowed us to understand what each member’s strengths were and to see how we can leverage that to better our presentation. All in all, I learned the power of group efforts – utilizing the minds of many can generate a more prosperous outcome.
This course has provided me with a chance to work closely with my classmates and to learn more about innovation in real companies. It was really helpful to take the theories we learned in class and see how they had helped companies like IBM, GE, and J&J grow. In addition, I found Professor Darwin’s personal story to be extremely touching. Throughout the semester, it was clear that he cared a lot about each of us as individuals as well as students. It is rare to have that kind of interaction with a professor at a large school like Berkeley.
Thank you Prof Solomon for this great semester. My biggest takeaway besides today’s summary is the impact of open innovation. Open innovation is the key for big corporations to revitalize from within and outside. Relating with my major, the open innovation procedure involves with innovation with technology and the help to development the innovative idea. By venture capital, incubators, open innovation centers, technology support, and talents clusters are all elements to support open innovation. And the mindset of open innovation, being open and not greedy, the companies in fact gains more value (cash or assets). The impact of open innovation for the society is also the result of this open mindset that everything in the world is open for discussion and collaboration.
Ever since I have been taking this class my mind automatically reverts to thinking about utilization and maximizing resources. I think that the lesson of the pizza on the table is one that will stick with me for the rest of my life. I love the idea of not letting resources become stagnant.
I also find myself thinking more regularly about partnerships and who can would be of benefit to my organization so that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
One last point was that I loved listening to Professor Darwin. I found his lectures engaging and full of useful information.
Thank you all for your contributions in class. You were all lovely and it was wonderful getting to know some of you through the semester.
Thank you Dan and thank you Solomon for all you give to help and care you have given to all of us!
I think the key takeaway from this class for me was not setting limits on your ideas and goals. In lectures he discussed how sometimes people would give up on ideas because it didn’t fit in the company’s business model or there was no market for it at the time but sometimes by waiting for the right time or moving to the right location that seemingly worthless idea can create a whole new market and transform society. This is applicable to setting goals for yourself. My takeaway from the personal innovation plan midterm was that I don’t need to be afraid to set large goals for myself because what may seem daunting and impossible now may be within arm’s reach in the near future. Thanks for an amazing semester Professor Darwin and Dan!
I believe this course has been very valuable to me for many reasons. The first obvious reason is because I have learned a lot about the concept of open innovaiton and its importance in today’s business climate. It has also been fun to apply these learnings to a real world company to do a case study and come up with an improved business model. I believe our Wipro group has done a great job and keept a good attitude for the whole semester and because of this it has been a pleasure to work with them. However, I have also learned more in this class than just business. Darwin is the most inspiring and caring professor I have ever had and by making us create a personal business model I have also learned a lot about myself. Stort tack from the Swede!
I really learnt a lot of things I did not expect I would be learning when I first signed up for this class. I completely did not expect that I would learn so much about subjects like the Internet of Things industry, Smart Cities, and the economy of India. I was truly wondering to be able to spent an entire semester finding more about the latest innovations and technologies. Professor Darwin’s lectures was able to provide us with the necessary frameworks and tools to truly explore these interest problems, while his vast network of executives and experts that he generously shared with us really gave us a lot of insights that we could not have gotten elsewhere. For me, this class is an example of how open innovation is able to disrupt things, and really motivates me to apply what I learnt in the class to other things I will do in the future as well. Thank you so much to Professor Darwin and Dan for making the classes run smoothly, and spending so much time outside of class to help us out whenever we need assistance!
Professor Darwin left us with many profound and touching thoughts during our last lecture. In fact, I sincerely appreciated how he has made the extra effort to get to know each of us this past semester, fostering relationships I believe will last for a long time. He has shown us through example how open innovation can be applied to our own personal lives through dialogue and sharing stories, as Jacqueline mentioned.
One key lesson I will take away from this course is that constantly scrapping your ideas, going back to the drawing board to come up with new ones, and reiterating upon them is a normal process of open innovation. It is upon rethinking through your ideas and listening to the advice of others that you come up with stronger and better plans. I cannot count the number of times we have radically changed our business model or have had two to three hour long conference calls/meetings with the professor, but in the end it was all worth it after our final deliverable. It was so rewarding to see how well my team and I responded to the judge’s questions with confidence and receiving one of the best compliments we have ever heard before. Thank you Professor Darwin for your profound wisdom and challenging us to think harder and a little bigger about our business model (and even our lives!) after every lecture and meeting.
Going into the course, I didn’t really understand what open innovation even meant. Now at the end of the class, I have learned about so many different elements of what an open business model is and how it is changing the way companies do business. My biggest takeaways from the course are the importance of collaboration and inflows/outflows of knowledge. These topics particularly resonated with me because the same can be applied to our personal business models as well.
From the different cases and our Wipro business model to even Professor Darwin’s personal story, I also learned how inevitable failure can be. It has been a really great experience working with my team throughout the semester. We experienced times where we had to scrap everything and start from scratch, but in the end I believe we presented a great business model. I’m really glad I was able to go through the highs and lows of the semester with my team.