Introduction to Innovation: Everyone Is an Innovator

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Program Experience

Highlights and Key Outcomes

This course builds the foundation for innovation literacy and equips you to see opportunities everywhere.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

Recognize and define innovation in your own context, distinguishing between incremental improvements and breakthrough opportunities
Analyze innovation challenges from the perspectives of project, process, and strategy, understanding how each level shapes outcomes
Identify and enhance alpha assets — the unique resources that drive sustainable competitive advantage
Link innovation to organizational performance by mapping initiatives to financial levers like price, volume, cost, and capital efficiency
Evaluate strategic choices by balancing market pull vs. technology push, exploitation vs. exploration, and positioning across the Three Horizons
Apply iterative and adaptive processes to manage uncertainty, respond to disruption, and integrate AI into idea generation and evaluation

Experience and Impact

Self-paced and delivered entirely online, the course offers five in-depth modules (four to six hours each) that culminate in a digital completion badge. It combines video lectures, hands-on activities, and a combination of proven frameworks with examples from leaders and organizations that are successfully advancing their innovation goals.

Certificate Pathway

This is the first course in the three-course Innovation Strategy and Design Thinking Certificate. This certificate is earned by completing all three courses in the series:

Introduction to Innovation: Everyone Is an Innovator
Innovation Tournaments and the Process View
Design Thinking: Developing the Solution Concept

Each course may be taken individually, but together they form a comprehensive progression — from building foundational literacy in innovation, to mastering the mechanics of scaling ideas, to applying design thinking to create tested solution concepts.

Completing all three courses not only equips you with Wharton’s most powerful innovation tools, but it also earns you the Innovation Strategy and Design Thinking Certificate — a credential that recognizes your ability to apply rigorous, practice-based methods to lead innovation across products, services, and organizational processes.

Tuition

The tuition for this course is $1,350. You can also enroll in the full three-course Innovation Strategy and Design Thinking Certificate for $3,850 — which brings the per-course cost down to $1,283. Choosing the certificate not only saves you money but also gives you access to the complete innovation system and the recognized Wharton credential.

What Do I Earn?

CEU Credits

To receive CEUs for your Wharton Online course(s), you must complete all coursework and pass all assessments in a CEU-eligible program of study with a score of 70% or above.

CEUs are included with every Wharton Online course. Upon successful course completion, learners automatically earn one CEU, which is noted in the digital credentials.

Credentialing

Upon successfully completing your course, you'll receive a digital badge recognizing your achievement. The badge is a verified, shareable credential that showcases your dedication and newly acquired skills.

You can easily share your digital badge on LinkedIn, your personal website, digital resume, or email signature — making it simple for employers, peers, and your professional network to see what you've accomplished.

Who Should Attend

This course is designed for professionals across industries who want to drive meaningful impact through innovation. Ideal participants include:

Individual contributors and managers who want to sharpen daily problem-solving skills
Team leaders and high potentials responsible for mobilizing groups around innovation challenges
Executives seeking to align innovation practices with organizational strategy
Entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs eager to test and scale new ideas with credibility

Group Enrollment

To further leverage the value and impact of this program, we encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to Wharton. We offer group-enrollment benefits to companies sending four or more participants.

Faculty

Christian Terwiesch, PhDSee Faculty Bio

Andrew M. Heller Professor; Department Chairperson and Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions; Co-Director, Mack Institute of Innovation Management, The Wharton School; Professor of Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Research Interests: Analyzing operational performance, innovation management, R&D management

Karl Ulrich, ScDSee Faculty Bio

CIBC Endowed Professor; Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions; Professor of Management; Dean’s Office Advisor on Asia Strategy, The Wharton School

Research Interests: Environmental issues, product design and development, innovation