You’ll be welcomed to the program and begin connecting with fellow participants, while exploring the navigation and tools of your Online Campus. Be alerted to key milestones in the learning path, and review how your results will be calculated and distributed.

You’ll be required to complete your participant profile and submit a digital copy of your passport/identity document.

Please note that module titles and their contents are subject to change during course development.

Develop an understanding of innovation, the traditional contexts where it occurs, and the challenges corporations confront trying to build innovation capabilities.

• Outline innovation as defined by MIT
• Identify the spectrum of innovation and its implications for an organization
• Illustrate the innovation spectrum, linked to an organization's innovation priorities, challenges, and strategy
• Identify the key elements that are designed to drive innovation in an organization
• Articulate some of the challenges that arise with traditional internal systems
• Analyze how an organization's processes limit an effective innovation culture
• Categorize an organization's challenges and prioritize them
• Analyze an organization in order to identify its barriers to innovation and understand the relationships among these barriers

Understand the importance for innovation of co-location in ecosystems, the nature of innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities, and the role of an ecosystems’ critical stakeholders.

• Outline the key resources available in innovation ecosystems
• Explain why the world is not flat for innovation due to drivers of strong co-location and concentration for innovation activities around the world
• Review the ways in which your organization may already be linked to innovation ecosystems
• Interpret how to assess a country’s capacities for innovation and entrepreneurship, and why that matters for organizations looking at regional ecosystems within that country
• Analyze the I-Cap and E-Cap for a country of importance to your organization, and outline why that matters for their organization’s innovation strategy
• Discuss MIT’s iEcosystem Stakeholder Framework and the resources these stakeholders share in the ecosystem
• Articulate the roles of various stakeholders in an innovation ecosystem of your choice and assess their level of engagement and contribution
• Categorize your organization's interactions with those other stakeholders in its ecosystem according to relative roles and requirements

Recognize the importance of innovation-driven entrepreneurship and the role of experiment/evaluate innovation loops for innovation-driven enterprises (IDEs) within innovation ecosystems.

• Identify the process by which IDEs are established as start-ups but are different from the majority of SMEs
• Articulate the differences between IDEs and both larger SMEs and corporate enterprises
• Describe the importance of experimenting with and evaluating an idea in an innovation loop
• Articulate what can be learned from how IDEs use an innovation loop approach to reduce risk
• Deduce how a series of innovation loops can systematically improve a ‘problem/solution match’ and reduce uncertainty over time
• Conclude what can be learned from IDEs about the wider process of innovation
• Assess how the innovation loop approach might be used and applied in an organization for the early stages of the innovation process

Reflect on the roles that corporates play as stakeholders in an innovation ecosystem, and explore their links to the innovation-driven entrepreneur, university, risk capital, and government stakeholders.

• Review MIT’s Stakeholder Model for innovation ecosystems
• Articulate the interests of the corporate stakeholder in innovation ecosystems
• Distinguish the resources the corporate stakeholder may bring to innovation ecosystems
• Articulate the roles of corporates in engaging the entrepreneur and risk capital stakeholders in innovation ecosystems
• Investigate the resources the corporate stakeholder may bring to innovation ecosystems especially of interest for entrepreneurs, IDEs, and risk capital providers
• Articulate the roles of corporates in engaging the university stakeholder in innovation ecosystems
• Articulate the roles of corporates in engaging the government stakeholder in innovation ecosystems
• Recommend how an organization can use its resources and assets to enhance its effective engagement with an innovation ecosystem

Learn about different options available to organizations for facilitating meaningful engagement with their ecosystems.

• Demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of different tools for engagement, and their design elements
• Illustrate how engagement tools align with innovation loops
• Identify what a hackathon is, its design elements, and the strengths and weaknesses of hackathons as engagement tools
• Identify what an accelerator is, its design elements, and the strengths and weaknesses of accelerators as engagement tools
• Identify what a prize competition is, its design elements, and the strengths and weaknesses of prize competitions as engagement tools
• Analyze an ecosystem to determine which tool of engagement is most appropriate
• Decide how the relative success of engagement tools can be measured and evaluated

Develop a strategy for an organization building an innovation strategy within an innovation ecosystem framework.

• Assess an organization's innovation process and how it might be optimized internally to deliver for the organization
• Recommend how an optimized innovation process might allow an organization to better engage with the wider innovation ecosystem and its key stakeholders
• Articulate how inclusivity and diversity can be leveraged in innovation ecosystems
• Analyze the challenges of bringing innovation from the ecosystem into the organization, as well as the leadership approach and management processes that are needed to mitigate them
• Recommend steps an organization can take to engage with its ecosystem for innovation
• Finalize a plan with specific steps an organization can take for engaging with an innovation ecosystem