Innovate on Demand (Coursera)

Innovate on Demand (Coursera)
Two of the more prolific myths associated with innovation in organizations are that you must “think outside the box,” and that creativity is something you are born with (or not). This course will debunk these myths, by teaching you to innovate "INSIDE the box", leveraging your knowledge, resources, and expertise in proven step-by-step processes to quickly and effectively generate and implement truly creative ideas.

Through the materials and hands-on exercises, you will discover where creative ideas really come from and how to rapidly and repeatedly generate them on your own – for your own topics – using a set of thinking tools and principles. The course instructors and guests will provide expertise, humor, and many examples to teach you these valuable creativity skills and – more importantly – they will share decades of their own research and experience working on individual, team, and organizational levels to help companies cultivate a self-sustaining practice of innovation alongside curiosity, openness and other habits that make businesses flourish (and make the workplace more rewarding and enjoyable).

Specifically, you will learn:

·The differences between traditional ideas and creative ideas

·Barriers to innovative thinking, how to identify them and overcome them

·How constraints, conceptualization, and visualization can help you see more opportunities around you.

·Function Follows Form, a complementary approach to innovation, to supplement your existing “Voice of the Customer (VOC)” and technology research & development efforts

·Tools and principles for systematic inventive thinking, in order to structure the creative thinking process.

·How to cultivate creativity at every level of the organization through fixed and growth mindsets, diverse teams, using rewards and the need for autonomy.

At the end of the course, you will be able to:

·Discover and surmount self-imposed roadblocks that prevent you from seeing creative ideas right in front of you

·Apply a systematic method that will help you find differentiated, interesting solutions to problems and new opportunities in your work

·Develop mindsets and create cultural structures to improve the pathway of innovation for yourself and your organization

·Communicate to your colleagues how innovation can be accomplished through structure, rather than chaos