My getting into the Alliance Manchester Business School to do a Master’s in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship was a product of an experiment to try something new in a different country, as I had been running my firm, Obsessive Innovations, which is a venture studio in Ghana that specialized with providing founders with resources as well as the digital services they need to build their products. I wanted to gain exposure to literature and people who had built similar institutions in different cities to understand how they built these to improve my understanding of innovation, as I am passionate about innovation among underrepresented people.    

Academic Courseware and Research  

I was blown away by the quality of the literature my classmates and I were exposed to during the course, as it was heavily driven by research and taught by lecturers heavily versed in their topics. I developed hard skills in quantitative data analysis and analytical skills such as literature reviewing and the ability to analyze case studies. I was particularly intrigued by the intro to innovation management, place and innovation, and the case studies in innovation management that did a breakdown into how big institutions and places innovate, which is a bit different from what I was used to in seeing innovation come from small ventures. I ended up doing a thesis exploring how the concepts of innovation could be applied to underserved communities as well as emerging markets such as Africa, whereby there exists resource constraints and a general lack of innovation infrastructure.  

Challenges  

Some of the challenges, given that I was from Accra, Ghana, which usually has a warm climate, was adapting to the weather here as Manchester is notoriously known for being on the cooler side of things as well as a city that is visited by rain quite a lot. Another challenge was managing the workload, given that the courses were very steeped in research and required a lot of reading and submission with deadlines very close to each other. It was not the most straightforward writing high-quality papers all around the same time. Still, with masterful time management, I think a student should be able to master better how to deliver high-quality submissions.  

Community and Extracurricular Activities  

During my time here, I got to work with ProductDive, which is a community that trains Product Leaders from underrepresented communities and helps them to gain the requisite network they need to build their career. It is a community where I refined my event management skills as I worked with the team to build out our community in the UK and organize educational events within multiple cities in the UK.

Personal Growth and Conclusion  

I personally have learned a lot from the course with regards to the history and concepts of innovation and plan to use these concepts in the stages of my life in innovating for people from unrepresented backgrounds as well as empowering and giving them the tools to innovate from themselves as well. 

Written by Kelvin, current MSc Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship student at AMBS

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