How innovations change industries

23 October 2013. HSG specialists explain in short animated films what corporate responsibility, entrepreneurship and the energy turnaround are all about. In the wake of academic seminars with a lunch snack, the so-called “Brown Bag Lunches”, the video series “Little Green Bags” offers digital bites of knowledge.

Creative imitation is halfway towards innovation
The fourth part of the series focuses on business model innovations.

The film explains how successful companies like Nokia, Polaroid or Kodak suddenly lose their edge. It also reveals that innovation does not necessarily requires high technology, excessive research and development and brand-new ideas. “Successful innovations emerge when entrepreneurs learn from others and reinvent their own business models – not only the technology,” says Oliver Gassmann, the author of this animation film.

Gassmann has examined business model innovations and noticed that innovative firms usually apply the principle of creative imitation. This happens in four steps: initiation, ideation, integration and implementation.

Digital bite of knowledge
The HSG video series “Little Green Bags” invites people to find out more about the fields of knowledge ploughed by the University of St.Gallen. The topics of energy, sustainability, innovation and entrepreneurship are debating points in society, in the economy and in politics and are therefore also an important component of research and teaching at the HSG.

The first film was made by the Institute for Business Ethics and was entitled “What is Corporate Social Responsibility?” The Institute of Technology Management illustrated the effectuation principle and the 10 myths of entrepreneurship. The fourth part explains how innovations come into being. The films are produced in cooperation with the Zurich animation studio Zense and film director Andri Hinnen, who is himself a graduate (SIM-HSG) of the University of St.Gallen. The Academic Director of the animation film series is Prof. Dr. Thomas Beschorner, Director of the Institute for Business Ethics at the HSG.

Photo: Zense / Playlist Little Green Bags: http://bit.ly/littlegreenbagshsg