Online Program Systematic Innovation: Scaling Up from a Hunch

What if innovation was about being productively wrong?

Upon hearing the word “innovating,” our minds are trained to hear or read that word and imagine end results awash with flash and grandeur: a revolutionary product launch; a cure for a centuries-old illness; pristine robots programmed to handle manufacturing operations. While these “end results” are undoubtedly impressive, they expose a flaw in our thinking about what “innovating” really means and how innovations are developed.

Innovations lack novelty as they emerge. They begin with resources that already exist. We only deem them innovations in hindsight, without regard for the active, nonlinear process—full of twists and turns, challenges and progress—that scales them up to real-world impact. The innovations we celebrate today are the end product of incredible effort, but also—or more importantly, as some may argue—of productive setbacks and persistence, all of which originate from a simple hunch.

The challenge is to scale it up.

With MIT Professional Education’s online program “ Systematic Innovation: Scaling Up from a Hunch,” you will discover how to do so.

+300%

Large innovators that outperform their big-company peers put more money behind their innovation programs—1.4 times more as a percentage of sales*—and they get far greater payoffs: four times as much as a percentage of sales (+300).

Source: BCG (Boston Consulting Group)

50%

Over the next 10 years, around 50% of the companies* currently on the Fortune 500 list will be replaced. The life expectancy of large companies is rapidly declining as startups enter the market at a rapid pace. Innovation helps these companies to remain relevant.

Source: Fortune

75%

The number of companies reporting that innovation is among their organizations’ top three priorities.

Source: BCG (Boston Consulting Group)

An online program on how to do innovation and scale up from a hunch

Beginning with your initial hunch and the resources you already have; you will explore the systematic process of innovating. In doing so you will examine the role of critical thinking in innovating, design your own toolkit to solve real-world problems, and learn more about the benefits this framework can offer you and your organization.

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The skills you will develop

This program offers a fresh approach—a doer's approach—to innovating. Aspiring innovators will explore how to turn their “hunches” into tangible, real-world problems by learning to envision the organizations that can solve them. You will discover the advantages of converting challenges into opportunities and acquire the necessary tools and techniques to work with parts and people to move forward in your innovating. Throughout this program, you will:

Delve into hunches:

what they look like and their central role in solving real-world problems.

Examine the solvable, recognizable, and verifiable attributes

of real-world problems in order to devise solutions for them.

Engage in a process of critical thinking

to prototype and scale up your problem.

Develop a kit for innovating, incorporating the strategies

and tools needed to transform hunches into real-world impact.

Work with strategies

for scoping out a space of opportunity.

Address significant problems with limited resources

by bringing them down to table scale.

Discover how to secure the tangible and non-tangible resources

needed to scale up your work.

Explore how to collect and use data and information appropriately

and to your advantage to write a final technology-problem report that advances your innovating.

In addition, you will receive a Certificate of Completion

All participants that successfully complete the course will receive a Digital Certificate from MIT Professional Education (MIT Professional Education Certificate of Completion).

Students in the MIT Professional Education Digital Plus Systematic Innovation: Scaling Up from a Hunch program will also receive 6.4 Continuing Education Units (CEU*).

* A CEU is a unit of credit equivalent to 10 hours of participation in an accredited program for professionals.

This program is directed to

Innovating is a cornerstone of business. In this cross-sectional program, professionals from any industry, business model, or position in an organization will benefit from the tools, skills, and knowledge on offer. This program is aimed at professionals with an enthusiasm for innovating, including:

C-SUITE AND MANAGERS UNDERGOING TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESSES
in which innovation is central to success.

ENTREPRENEURS OF TECH START-UPS
with innovative aspirations.

TECHNICAL EXPERTS
with a strong interest in technology and innovation.

PROFESSIONALS
across all industries on the path to discovering how to truly innovate in their business operations.

Meet the Faculty of this program

LUIS PEREZ-BREVA

MIT Faculty Director of Innovation Teams Enterprise (MIT Engineering and MIT Sloan) Innovator, Educator, Author, AI Problem Solver

“If you are hoping for a straight path to impact, innovating may appear daunting at first. You need a lot of information to trace changes at the outcome all the way back to the beginnings”

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Luis Perez-Breva, PhD is an innovator, entrepreneur, educator and the author of Innovating: A Doer’s Manifesto (The MIT Press, 2017). He is an MIT expert in technology innovation, venture labs, taking deep tech to impact, and applying artificial intelligence to solve real-world problems. He has enjoyed success with inventions and new companies in security, telecom, fintech, and genetics to name some. Chiefly among them is the AI-based system to locate 911 calls in case of emergency deployed worldwide. His work has been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, BBC, Wharton Business Radio, Entrepreneur, Zdnet, Quartz, Epsilon Theory and several other national and international media.

Currently, Luis is the Faculty Director of Innovation Teams (iTeams),MIT’s flagship joint enterprise between MIT Engineering and MIT Sloan to put the Institute’s deep tech advances to work to solve real-world problems. Since 2007, through iTeams, he has helped nearly 200 MIT technologies find a path to impact leading to the formation of some 40 new, enduring deep tech companies across all industries from mining to telecommunications.

Luis has worked with venture capital and numerous corporations and adapted his work to develop innovation factories. Currently, Luis is developing a technology repurposing fund to rescue, recycle, and, in essence, turn around technologies analogous to how private equity seeks to turn around companies.

Dr. Perez-Breva holds a PhD in artificial intelligence from MIT and degrees in chemical engineering, physics, and business from leading universities in Spain (Institut Quimic de Sarrià), France (Ecole Normale Supérieure), and the United States (MIT). In 2011, the Spanish government recognized his career achievements by awarding him the Order of Civil Merit of the Kingdom of Spain. In 2020 Luis became an American citizen.

ONLINE PROGRAM

Systematic Innovation:

Scaling Up from a Hunch