Startup Entrepreneurship Specialization

Skill at discovering new ideas, and delivering them, may be one of the most important practical job skills, in today’s and tomorrow’s job market. Creativity is an acquired skill, one that improves with practice. This course aims to empower individuals who believe they have lost their innate creativity, because they, their employers or teachers prefer the three R's: replication, repetition and rote, to innovation. We show how to re-ignite rusty creative powers.

During this course, you will learn proven tools, frameworks and concepts useful for discovery– generating an endless stream of new ideas implementing at least some of those ideas with skill and persistence, based on books and articles written by the instructors. In the first part of the course, you will learn a proven structured method for generating and implementing world-changing ideas known as ‘Zoom in, Zoom out, Zoom in’ that makes creativity more accessible to everyone. In the following weeks, you will learn practical proven tools useful for delivering ideas by employing the basic principles of business and management. You will practice the method, use it to tackle challenging real-world needs and produce a 2-3 minutes video presenting your idea. Course Learning Outcomes On successfully completing this four-week course, you will be able to: - Manage a process to generate an unending stream of creative ideas - Lead a process of innovation and implement ideas through all phases from discovery to delivery. - Apply creativity to a wide range of strategic management issues. - Solve problems with a high degree of innovation, creative thinking and risk taking. - Use and apply proven structured method for generating and implementing world-changing ideas known as ‘Zoom in, Zoom out, Zoom in’. - Develop and implement an innovation in your own practice. - Identify new and unfamiliar challenges and reflect on these challenges from a creative point of view, action they require and service they provide. - Demonstrate creative problem solving skills for defining, structuring and solving real world operations management problems.

How do you implement ideas?

This course provides practical proven tools for transforming an idea into a product or service that creates value for others. As students acquire these tools, they learn how to tell bad ideas from good, how to build a winning strategy, how to shape a unique value proposition, prepare a business plan, compare their innovation to existing solutions, build flexibility into their plan and determine when best to quit. As a vital part of the course students conduct on-site interviews with entrepreneurs who have launched startups, and are eager to share their valuable insights with them. Upon completing this course successfully, graduates will be able to: 1. Transform ideas into real products, services and processes, by validating the idea, testing it, and turning it into a growing, profitable and sustainable business. 2. Identify the major steps and requirements in order to estimate the potential of an innovative idea as the basis of an innovative project. 3. Reach creative solutions via an iteration of a virtually endless stream of world-changing ideas and strategies, integrating feedback, and learning from failures along the way. 4. Apply the 10 entrepreneurial tools in creating a business plan for a new innovative venture. 5. Apply methods and strategies learned from interviews with startup entrepreneurs and innovators. 6. Communicate and sell innovative ideas successfully.

This course, which is Part Three in the series of Startup Entrepreneurship specialization, offers Life Lessons from a Master Innovator, with proven achievements. During this course you will listen to conversations and interviews with Mr. David (Dadi) Perlmutter, who until recently was Executive VP of Intel corporate. Dadi will talk about 10 life lessons, based on his 34 years as a rebel innovator and entrepreneur.

We will share with you the following lessons: Love and Knowledge are infinite: grow and share; Learn from Failures and Successes; Nothing Moves without a Vision; Have a Differentiated Market Transforming Strategy; Dare to Take Action; Fight Resistance; It is All About the Ecosystem; Build a Team; Keep it Simple and Work Hard. By the end of the course the learner will: * Know how to lead a process of innovation and implement ideas through all its phases from discovery to delivery in your own field of choice. * Know how to apply creativity to generate creative ideas in a wide range of strategic management issues. * Know how to solve problems in general, with a high degree of innovative creative thinking, to widen the range of possible choices * Identify new and unfamiliar challenges and needs, reflect on them from a creative point of view (zoom in), decide on the action they require (zoom out) and generate a novel and useful solution * Transform ideas into real value-creating products, services and processes. * Be able to analyze both success and failure and draw conclusions from both, for improving future innovative efforts. * Be able to identify and create key features of innovative products and services and in doing so, generate strategically differentiated innovations that are unique * Be able to present your ideas persuasively and overcome resistance. * Know how to simplify a complex product and make it user friendly. Course assignments will include participation in two discussion groups and four assignments. In each assignment you will be asked to deal with a question relating to an interview you have seen.