Innovation Certificate 

Starts January 2021 - Distance Learning Web-Based 

This certificate supports students who are working to bring innovation into adoption. The three courses teach how to design for a military environment, how processes of adoption work in organizations and communities, and how to learn the leadership skills to mobilize a community to adopt the innovation. The certificate includes a capstone project that applies the learning from the three courses to design a significant innovation and bring it into adoption in a military community. This certificate is delivered online with a mix of synchronous and asynchronous elements. It includes coaching for the capstone project. An optional in-person workshop will be offered for students who want to learn more about hands-on practices.

Introduction to Design and Innovation

This course provides an overview of design and innovation concepts and processes; cultivates appreciation of the challenges militaries face in efforts and initiatives in these areas; and guides students to use design in shaping capstone projects aimed at innovation-oriented problem-solving.

MN 3811 – Entrepreneurship Adoption and Implementation

The course helps students develop their knowledge about how the great new technologies, ideas, and practices they research and talk about in other courses or in their workplaces actually get adopted by individuals and organizations. We get inside this phenomenon and understand why innovation adoption proceeds the way it does. We apply the concepts both to commercial and military cases to build a broad-base of knowledge on this topic.

CS 4925 – Innovation Leadership.

This course begins with the premise that innovation is the adoption of new practices in communities. It teaches the eight essential practices by which innovation leaders foster adoption. It interprets the eight practices within a language-action perspective of communication, moving students out of the space of giving explanations and into the space of making offers and declarations. Students practice these ideas by designing an innovation project that they can commit to for a long time, bringing it to early adoption by the end of the course.  

Capstone

Students engage in an innovation project they will design and lead into the stage of early adoption in a military community. They will receive periodic coaching to assist them in applying the three courses to their innovation goals.