Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate

The Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate Program teaches you essential skills and effective strategies for working in and managing innovative organizations – and for starting new ones. In online innovation courses designed to engage and inspire, you will learn by doing from some of Stanford’s best in the field.

Be prepared to get out of your chair and use your whole brain, because creativity and innovation take practice.

You Will Gain

• A greater understanding of the tools that every innovative organization needs to succeed
• A wider and deeper set of innovation skills, customized to fit both your organization’s needs and your career goals
• A greater understanding the best and most current research on innovation and entrepreneurship
• Deeper insights into the people you are serving - a powerful tool for innovation
• The joy of learning from and engaging with some of Stanford’s smartest and most entertaining teachers
• Personal feedback and advice from Stanford’s team of innovation coaches
• A greater capacity to keep honing your innovation skills for years after you’ve completed the program – we teach participants how to keep learning and, in turn, to teach what they learn to others

Earning the Certificate

This certificate is offered online. Courses may be taken in any order and are self-paced. You have the flexibility of taking individual courses within the program or earning the Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate by completing eight courses. (The free introductory course, Introduction to Innovation and Entrepreneurship, does not count towards the eight courses.)

Each course consists of online lecture videos, self-paced assignments and a final exam. A discussion forum allows you to interact with the teaching team and others who are enrolled in the course. The teaching team also provides feedback on select assignments.

You can earn Professional Development Units (PDUs) for taking courses in the SI&E program to maintain Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification

Prerequisites

• 5 years work experience
• Bachelor's degree, or equivalent, with minimum of 3.0 GPA
• Background in management or working in teams
• An entrepreneurial and innovative spirit

Each application will be evaluated as a whole, taking into consideration both your academic and professional experience. If you do not have all the prerequisites but still wish to be considered for the program, we encourage you to submit your application.

Time to Complete Certificate

The program’s online courses are self-paced and available on-demand for 60 days after the date of enrollment. This enables you to complete the program at your own pace. Each course takes roughly 10-12 hours to complete depending on your familiarity with the topic and experience with online learning.

Our pacing recommendation for courses of this length is to complete each course within 45 days. To be on track, we recommend that you plan to spend approximately two hours per week on the course.

Courses

Free Introductory Course

• Introduction to Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Choose any 8 courses

• Innovation Strategy: How to Find Inspiration
• Empathize and Prototype: A Hands on Dive into the Key Tools of Design Thinking
• The Power of Stories to Fuel Innovation
• Leading Collaborative Teams
• Leading Innovation
• Scaling Excellence: How You Can Help Make it Happen
• Demand Creation: The Secrets of Driving Growth
• Building Company Culture
• Simple Rules for Strategy Driven Innovation
• Building Business Models
• Financing Innovation: Valuing Projects and Firms
• Product Marketing Essentials
• Cultivating the Entrepreneurial Mindset
• Negotiation: How to Get (More of) What You Want