Corporate Innovation

Offered By: University of Queensland via edX

Course Description

Overview

The ability to innovate is crucial for business survival and growth in the current climate of rapid technological advancement and changing consumer preferences. Without innovation and entrepreneurship skills, more and more corporate ventures are failing when faced with market challenges.

In this MicroMasters program, you will develop the knowledge and skills to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship within your organization. The program will teach you how to understand, integrate and promote innovation in a variety of settings, including public, private and not-for profit organizations and research institutions. Drawing on the innovation value chain, this program will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the different aspects of corporate innovation, including:

how to foster creativity and design thinking in the initial idea generation phase
how organizations can utilize idea management tools to select the most feasible ideas for development, including how to manage intellectual property, introduce innovative processes and commercialize new technologies, products and services;
how an evidence-based approach to innovation management can be utilized to improve the decision-making process and how to introduce open innovation practices; and
How to build innovation into the strategy, capabilities and culture of an organization.

During this program, theory will be complemented with real-world case studies, which will help you develop strategies that you can apply to improve business productivity, economic growth and global competitiveness. Additionally, as a verified learner, you will have the opportunity to refine your knowledge and skills, with the guidance of UQ experts, through a series of activities that allow you to apply theory and tools to your own ideas.

Graduates of the program will be empowered with the ability to foster entrepreneurial and innovative behaviors in themselves and others; making them well suited to leadership roles within innovation programs, and enhancing an organizations ability to rapidly respond to and survive market threats.

Syllabus

Courses under this program:
Course 1: Design Thinking and Creativity for Innovation

Learn the fundamentals of how design thinking and creativity can be used to enable innovation.

Course 2: Idea Development: Create and Implement Innovative Ideas

Learn the strategies entrepreneurs and organizations use to create and bring to market innovative ideas.

Course 3: Innovation: From Plan to Product

Learn how to build an innovative business model using the most effective tools, including forecasting, prototyping, financial modeling and customer discovery.

Course 4: Creating and Sustaining an Innovation Culture

Learn how to scale and drive innovation in your organization by creating a culture that can sustain and support it.

Course 5: Corporate Innovation Capstone Assessment

Demonstrate your knowledge and understanding from the Corporate Innovation MicroMasters program.

Courses

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10 weeks, 8-10 hours a week, 8-10 hours a week
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Innovation matters to everyone, including managers in small or large organizations, start-up entrepreneurs, those in government roles, or teachers.

This course looks at how individuals and organizations use creativity and design thinking skills to identify and choose opportunities that enable innovation. Creative problem solving skills are developed and enhanced through a range of real world activities. An overview of design thinking tools is provided to help students understand design thinking as a problem solving approach. Ideas developed through these processes are then applied to a customer discovery approach to understand their value in the market place.
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10 weeks, 8-10 hours a week, 8-10 hours a week
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To create and bring to market innovative ideas, entrepreneurs invest substantial resources in their creation without being certain their idea will be successful. How do entrepreneurs manage this process? What strategies do they use? What role does the innovativeness of their ideas play in the strategies they adopt? How do they maintain motivation when faced with setbacks?

In this course, we tackle these questions by focusing on:
- Types of innovations and their market impact;
- The importance of taking action, knowledge, learning and resources in the creation of innovative ideas;
- How entrepreneurs make strategic decisions under uncertainty;
- The Management of intellectual property; and
- Maintaining motivation in the face of setbacks
By drawing on the case of Google Glass, their own experiences and ideas, students are encouraged to synthesize knowledge from each Module to gain an in-depth understanding of the complexity of innovation process.
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10 weeks, 8-10 hours a week, 8-10 hours a week
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Business models are regarded as a form of innovation and not merely just a vehicle for commercialization. In this course, students will learn about multiple business model innovation avenues and metrics for assessing on-going market fit and sustainability.

This course introduces an evidence-based approach to innovation management with the aim of providing students with the capability to understand the strategic value of information and the tools and techniques that can be used to analyze and use that information to improve decision-making. Tools include: customer discovery, prototyping, financial modeling, business plans and forecasts.

Students will learn how to apply the most effective tools in developing sustainable business models by exploiting viable, validated opportunities in rapidly changing environments where traditional strategic management approaches are less effective.
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10 weeks, 8-10 hours a week, 8-10 hours a week
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Go beyond just an individual new product, service and/or business model initiative to build a culture of innovation.

This course will help you identify the organizational barriers to innovation and provide you with the tools to assess your innovation readiness. You will learn new skills, capabilities and strategies that will help you to drive innovation in your team or organization. Through case studies and interactive exercises, you will develop skills in creating organizational cultures and structures that support innovation, build capacity and resources in your team and organization for innovation and examine your role as an innovation leader who empowers champions of innovation.

The course concludes by discussing the importance of ensuring that innovation is purposeful and that it creates economic and social value.
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5 weeks, 8-10 hours a week, 8-10 hours a week
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After completing the four content courses in the MicroMasters program, students are encouraged to complete the Capstone Assessment and earn their MicroMasters credential from UQx.

This capstone offers students the opportunity to bring their learnings together and exhibit their knowledge and growth through three activities:
1. An oral presentation (video) based around a visual essay: a series of pictures that identify an innovation, how that innovation is supported by economy and how the innovation impacts the economy.
2. A business-model canvas report (written essay) based on an innovative idea developed by the student.
3. A 3 minute oral pitch of their business-model idea and subsequent Q&A session with a member of the faculty, conducted via a live video interview.
Learners must successfully complete all parts of the assessment to earn the MicroMasters credential.

This course is only open to learners who have successfully completed and gained verified certificates in all four courses in the Corporate Innovation MicroMasters program.

Taught by

John Steen, Martie-Louise Verreynne, Tim Kastelle and Anna Jenkins