Examination of a discontinuous innovation adoption in an MBA marketing curriculum: a partnership perspective

Review of Business, Spring, 2009 by Tiger Li, Barnett A. Greenberg

Executive Summary

A discontinuous innovation alters the social behavior of the adopters. In business and marketing education, such an innovation transforms the behavior of both faculty and students. This article examines the adoption of a discontinuous innovation, a purely experiential marketing course, in an MBA curriculum.

Our teaching innovation went through a three-stage adoption process, including initiation, integration, and diffusion. Currently, this experiential course, which is based on a simulation game, is taught as a core course in several master level programs in the business college, including an Executive MBA, a Global Executive MBA, an International MBA (IMBA), a Master of International Business (MIB), an overseas MIB, an overseas IMBA, and an overseas Executive MBA.

Our successful adoption of the discontinuous innovation can be attributed primarily to innovation partnerships and collaborative activities. We forged a close partnership with Innovative Learning Solutions Inc., a software developer, so that we could jointly devise a simulation game named Marketplace. We participated in its development in various capacities. Our partnering activities were focused on game development and testing, two successive stages of product innovation. Our participation in these activities was instrumental to the adoption of Marketplace in our programs.

The new teaching approach we adopted over the last decade addresses several limitations of the lecture-based method, and also provides a number of other benefits. We conducted an empirical study to examine whether students perceived these advantages. On the overall dimensions, the simulation course was seen as a better vehicle in helping students make career preparations, achieve educational goals, and utilize time. It was also advantageous in providing a high level of involvement and satisfaction.

Introduction

A discontinuous innovation alters the social behavior of the adopter (Christensen 1997). In business and marketing education, such an innovation transforms the behavior of both faculty and students. "The professor's role evolves from that of a knowledge fact provider to a knowledge theorist and manager" and the student changes from a passive knowledge acquirer to an active learner (Celsi and Wolfinbarger 2002, p. 69).

However, many technologies adopted in business colleges today are characterized as incremental or continuous innovations, in nature replacing old media to support the lecture-centered learning mode (Backhaus and Liff 2007). For example, PowerPoint and Corel Presentation, advancements from transparencies, are mostly used for content transfer, i.e., demonstrations of textbook materials. An electronic syllabus on the Internet is a virtual mirror of the paper brochure and handout in the classroom. Most Web-based classes, though more flexible because of their synchronous and asynchronous deliveries, are an extension of physical classrooms. While these innovations facilitate teaching, they do not fundamentally alter the cognitively passive learning style in lecture-based classes.

The objective of this article is to introduce the adoption of a discontinuous innovation, a purely experiential marketing strategy course, in an MBA curriculum. To achieve this goal, we first describe the simulation game selected as the experiential device, our innovative pedagogy, and a three-stage adoption process we went through. Then, based on a partnership perspective, we examine the contributing factors in the adoption process. In the next section, we present an empirical study to evaluate the effectiveness of the new pedagogy. The information in this study is based on more than a decade of successful experience of the faculty in the department of marketing at a large southeastern public university.

Teaching Innovation Adoption

Discontinuous Innovation

The discontinuous innovative technology we have adopted is Marketplace, a computer network-based program provided by Innovative Learning Solutions, Inc. (ILS). The program allows a class to simulate the inception of a global industry and its development through growth to early maturity. In the virtual business world, students establish their own companies, assume the role of executives, and make strategic decisions in new product development, customer and competitor analysis, market entry, advertising and sales management.

In our simulation course, the learning behavior of students is distinctive from that in a lecture-based class in several ways. First, students go through an experiential learning process (Ramocki 2007; Saunders 1997). They take on a prescribed role, interact with other participants in the virtual industry, and process knowledge in a situation characterized by a high level of active involvement. Second, they take part in a recursive decision process (Kunz and Pradhan 1992). In the simulated industry, students in each team make quarterly decisions, and their performance in the quarter is a function of their decisions interacting with those of all other participating teams. At the end of the course, each team's market position (e.g., sales, market share, profits, etc.) is the consequence of the cumulative decisions of all teams over the life of the industry. Third, it is an integrative cognitive process (Shaw, Fisher, and Southey 1999). In this class, knowledge in marketing strategy is learned and applied not in isolation but in conjunction with that in other business functional areas. For example, when students design a new product and its promotion campaigns, they need to simultaneously make and implement supportive decisions in manufacturing, accounting, finance, and distribution.