Masterclass: Ideenentwicklung in Wirtschaftsinformatik und Management

General Information

Content

The course is intended to teach you the skills to come up with your own useful and revelatory ideas as well as how to present and articulate them convincingly. In broad terms, it can be a transformative experience about what you think about an idea, how others perceive your idea, and how to handle the related challenges. Ultimately, you can use the insights for a follow-up project in your professional and private life (e.g., research proposal, master thesis, project pitching).

The weekly exercises will be supported by research-oriented tasks in which you will learn and independently apply phenomena-oriented approaches to develop your own ideas in the form of research objectives, questions, and contributions. These insights from research will be transferred to examples in practice. Collecting and analyzing empirical data is hereby not a direct part of the course (which is covered in a different seminar or thesis). You will share, discuss and review ideas in small groups to reflect on and promote your individual learning process.

Overall, the course provides you with the opportunity to develop a better understanding of what crafting valuable ideas – particularly in information systems and management - is all about. Drawing on seminal papers and editorials in the respective disciplines, you will learn to ask the right questions and look for the right answers when you approach projects – so that you do not unnecessarily waste valuable resources.

Learning Goals

After the course, students will be able to:

• name and understand what an idea is all about
• name and understand what a theory, contribution, and impact are
• understand and apply how to generate and articulate a good idea
• understand and apply how to manage reactions of the audience
• understand the wider implications of valuable ideas
• develop an own valuable idea for research
• The weekly exercises will be supported by research-oriented tasks in which you will learn and independently apply phenomena-oriented approaches to develop your own ideas in the form of research objectives, questions, and contributions.
• These insights from research will be transferred to examples in practice. Collecting and analyzing empirical data is hereby not a direct part of the course (which is covered in a different seminar or thesis).
• You will share, discuss and review ideas in small groups to reflect on and promote your individual learning process.

Topics

Lecture

• what a valuable idea is, and what it is not
• how to translate a valuable idea into an actionable objective and question,
• how to clearly and convincingly formulate an idea,
• how an audience perceives a presented idea and how to react to their concerns
• the wider implications of valuable ideas for research and practice

Excercise

• Introduction or recapitulation of the basics of academic writing
• Introduction or recapitulation of the basics of theories and contributions
• Apply insights on exemplary data sets
• Presenting and discussing own ideas
• Reviewing and discussing others’ ideas

Remarks

The meetings will be on-site.

The meetings are in irregular intervals within the semester. The concrete dates will be announced in advance in StudIP.

The meetings are interactiev and discussion oriented. Therefore, regular attendance is required. More information regarding the participation will be communicated via StudIP and in the kick-off.