TU/e has long been at the forefront of AI research. Eindhoven Artificial Intelligence Systems Institute (EAISI), for instance, brings together all of our AI activities and allows students, researchers and representatives from industry to collaborate on applications with a direct impact on the real world. Such expertise has helped Innovation Management to craft a track that deeply explores technological innovation in artificial intelligence while remaining connected to the practical elements of entrepreneurship and sustainability.
Core courses
During the first year of Innovation Management, the four core courses build up students’ key knowledge of how to best manage innovation processes in the context of sustainability and an ever-changing world. Students also develop important quantitative and qualitative methodological skills, including systems thinking and modeling.
The AI and Digital Innovation Track builds on the knowledge from the core courses by taking an ecosystems perspective on the innovation process and addressing requirements for sustainable digital solutions involving multiple stakeholders. As with all TU/e programs, these skills are imparted through a mix of interactive lectures, engaging assignments and group work covering topics related to state-of-the-art research by the university’s professors.
AI and Digital Innovation track courses
The AI and Digital Innovation track is about creating digital system designs with strong engineering and technical components, which students can learn to achieve through four courses. Some course names may change slightly as the degree is updated.
- Design of AI and Systems. This course is about approaches to understanding opportunities and challenges related to AI systems and designing responsible AI systems.
- Business Process Management. This course discusses the integrated management of business processes as they move through the various phases of the process lifecycle (i.e., discovery, diagnosis, design, execution and control), with a special focus on sustainable business processes.
- Responsible AI. This course introduces the fundamental concept of responsible AI, as well as the main methods and techniques to enable applications in real-world business contexts.
- Green and digital transformation. This course explores core technologies, concepts and regulations relevant to the intersection of green and digital transformations, such as the design of sustainable business models enabled by digital technologies and their evaluation using AI techniques.
TU/e also offers the possibility to further customize the Innovation Management master’s degree by choosing courses from other tracks or other electives. This allows you to broaden your field of expertise and increase your employability. Options for customization include courses from Technology Entrepreneurship & Strategy, Sustainability Transitions, Collaborative Innovation & Marketing and Leadership & Organizing Innovation. This enables you to engage with expert staff from a variety of research groups: Innovation, Technology Entrepreneurship and Marketing, and Technology, Innovation and Society, and Human Performance Management.
Regardless of their combination of courses, students will be able to meet the following objectives upon completion of the track:
- The student is able to create digital system designs based on requirements for sustainable digital solutions involving multiple stakeholders.
- The student is able to consider the impact of the digital system design on work processes and related sustainability practices of stakeholders.
- The student is able to create detailed system designs.
- The student is able to identify relevant digital technologies to design and operationalize sustainable business models.
- The student is able to use AI/data analytics techniques for evaluating sustainability solutions.
Graduation project
Master’s degrees at TU/e conclude with a graduation project that takes up two quartiles of the program and is often conducted within an organization in the relevant domain. Given that Brainport boasts over 5000 high-tech and IT companies, the region provides a wide array of options to find a place that suits you. Projects and partners from years gone by include:
- The potential of Brainport Eindhoven for related diversification in artificial intelligence (Brainport Development)
- Blockchain technology for peer-to-peer trading in the Dutch electricity system: from hype to reality (Eneco Group)
- Development of a capability maturity model for organization-wide green IT adoption (Deloitte Consulting)
- A firm-level advanced data analytics capability maturity model (ASML)
- The contribution of blockchain to circular business models in the manufacturing industry (SABIC)
These are just examples; students also have a high degree of freedom to choose a topic that appeals to them and matches their career vision.
Studying abroad
The world is increasingly connected and domains like AI are no exception. A master’s degree in Innovation Management therefore offers the option to go abroad in the first two quartiles of the second year of the program. By taking advantage of this opportunity, you stand to gain valuable experience for an international career in digital innovation.