By the end of this course, students will learn to:
● Assess the current state of the business related to:
o Engage, sell and serve the company’s target audience.
o The company’s digital readiness
o The business problem and/or opportunities from the current business environment, including
uncovering new and untapped markets by developing digital business assessment tools
● Find out how digital transformation has or will impact the related industry and business
● Uncover insights on the company’s current and new customers
● Analyze and identify the right digital business transformation strategies that the company can adopt to
compete and win over time
● Gain regional business experience, cross cultural understanding, networking and communication skills.
By the end of this course, students will learn to:
- Assess the current state of the business related to:
- Engage, sell and serve the company’s target audience.
- The company’s digital readiness
- The business problem and/or opportunities from the current business environment, including uncovering new and untapped markets by developing digital business assessment tools
- Find out how digital transformation has or will impact the related industry and business
- Uncover insights on the company’s current and new customers
- Analyze and identify the right digital business transformation strategies that the company can adopt to compete and win over time
- Gain regional business experience, cross cultural understanding, networking and communication skills.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Describe basic societal concepts and frameworks on sustainability and be able to guide a corporate’s
sustainability-based product and/or service design with these frameworks.
• Conduct a strategic and/or market assessment for a specific product, including the manner of
orientation (towards sustainability) of selected consumer markets (including overseas ones). This may
include conducting qualitative and secondary research on potential customers.
• Identify and solve a problem of how corporations can become more sustainable by innovating to meet
consumer needs. Specifically, design a value proposition via design thinking for a selected customer
segment, including the devising of a strategy to improve the product’s acceptance by the firm’s
potential customers and its broader market.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Explain core storytelling concepts, principles, and frameworks.
• Create engaging, persuasive, and inspiring stories for various audiences.
• Harness the power of Generative AI to create compelling and impactful stories.
• Apply the principles of creative effectiveness to their storytelling.
• Apply their storytelling knowledge and skills to real-world projects.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of firms’ competitive advantage
• Apply analytical techniques for diagnosing strategy formulation, including industry structure, resources, and business/corporate strategies
• Apply analytical techniques for diagnosing strategy implementation, including corporate governance, structure, and strategic leadership
• Identify strategic issues and design appropriate courses of action with relevant knowledge on ethics, social responsibility and sustainability
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of firms’ competitive advantage
• Apply analytical techniques for diagnosing strategy formulation, including industry structure, resources, and business/corporate strategies
• Apply analytical techniques for diagnosing strategy implementation, including corporate governance, structure, and strategic leadership
• Identify strategic issues and design appropriate courses of action with relevant knowledge on ethics, social responsibility and sustainability
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Assess a business problem and/or opportunity from the current business environment, including new and untapped markets
• Design interdisciplinary solutions to address the business challenge or future opportunities by considering strategy, marketing, operations, organization, finance, and communication
• Reason critically through the solution process with appropriate modes of analysis
• Describe the solution’s implementation plans and processes with regard to the firm’s existing strategy, market, and organization
• Apply a variety of approaches to engage with busy business executives to obtain guidance and information, as well as, secure their buy-in to your ideas
By the end of this course, students will have a good understanding of the process of product development and innovation and thus:
• Know where and how to find ideas for innovation
• Understand the differences between product innovation and business model innovation
• Have a toolbox for analysing and shaping a strategy for innovation
• Understand different types of organisation to promote innovation
• Have a deeper understanding of how to improve the productivity of Research and Development
• Improve the process of development of new products and services in order to gain time and improve the quality of the end product
• Understand the challenges of managing projects that face a lot of uncertainty
• Understand how to manage in networks of companies that together provide an innovation
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Analyze the power and impact of global and local challenges related to digital disruption and demographic change on business and society in general;
• Explain the importance of collaborative transformative leadership in addressing some of these complex issues head on in an integrated, interdisciplinary and novel manner, bringing about transformational, out-of-the box solutions;
• Appreciate what it takes in terms of design thinking to propose user-centred solutions, that create real value for stakeholders of participating client organizations;
• Articulate how selected leadership concepts such as transformational, collaborative leadership approaches can propel innovative problem solutions;
• Reflect effectively about their own leadership outlook and the acquisition of 21th century skills such as collaborative intelligence, through impactful and innovative SMU-X projects.
The overall objective of this module is to equip students with core knowledge of appreciating what it takes to plan, design, build and sustain (mega) cities that are innovative and sustainable and to know the challenges of successfully ‘selling’ new smart city concepts amidst increasing competition in this field.
By the end of this course, students will be able to appreciate the following 4 areas:
Taxonomy of Innovative & Sustainable Cities
• Describe the core characteristics of a Smart City and respective concepts
• Explain the unique characteristics of each component and how it adds value to innovative and sustainable (smart) cities
Design of Innovative & Sustainable Cities
• Understand the planning and design principles of Innovative & Sustainable Cities
• Explain the workings of each component of Innovative & Sustainable Cities In-depth study of selected (Mega) Cities
• Be familiar with the challenges of selected mega cities around the globe and understand how the smart city concept can add value in terms of livability
Commercialisation of the Smart City Concept
• Appreciate the challenges in successfully commercializing smart city concepts and applications
• Know some of the key players in the Singapore context which are involved in this service sector and establish network contacts
Note: Central to this course is a SMU-X group project that takes the form of an action-based and experiential
assignment, where student groups work with a partner organization with the aim of achieving innovative solutions
for the organization. Based on this experiential learning, students will gain acquire practical Smart City-related
competencies.