Staying Relevant

CTECH117 - Experimentation Planning

COURSE OVERVIEW

In this course, you will investigate different strategies to reduce the impact of unknowns and other risk factors on the successful deployment of your product or service idea. You will identify and evaluate a sequence of operational tasks to develop your product or service. Your task sequence will then undergo a peer review to inform the necessary changes to reduce risk and make your plan more viable. You will leave this course with a validated strategy for the development of your new product or service where risk has been reduced.

To be successful in this course you will need to come prepared with a loose plan for a new product or service.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Reduce risk for your product or service deployment.
• Develop an action plan to implement your development strategy.

Staying Relevant

CTECH116 - Prototypes and Pilots

COURSE OVERVIEW

In this course, you will design a testing plan for your product or service. You will choose an experimental strategy such as prototyping or pilots for collecting real-world data. Then, you will formulate your experiment to ensure reliable results while being conscious of accuracy and cost. You will identify what success looks like for your product or service and develop metrics to test those factors. By the end of the course, you will be prepared to test your prototype or pilot and evaluate how your product or service idea needs to improve.

To be successful in this course you will need to come prepared with a loose plan for a new product or service.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Describe three strategies for primary data collection from your customers or end users.
• Develop a testing plan for your product or service idea.
• Meet best practices in research design.

Staying Relevant

CTECH115 - Value Creation and the Business Model Canvas

COURSE OVERVIEW

In this course, you will conduct a five-step value creation analysis using the Business Model Canvas for a product or service idea. In conjunction with this analysis, you will evaluate your idea based on your competition and your unique value proposition. You will then craft a concise statement of why your idea will work. Finally, you will gather feedback from your peers and professionals in the industry to determine where you need to iterate your product or service idea. By the end of this course, you will have a validated Business Model Canvas for your concept.

To be successful in this course you will need to come prepared with an idea for a new product or service.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Conduct a thorough analysis of the value your business idea can create.
• Collect feedback on your idea from peers and experts.
• Iterate the components of your product or service idea.
  

Staying Relevant

CTECH114 - Developing and Pitching Ideas

COURSE OVERVIEW

Using your own expertise, you will refine your list of business opportunities in stages to your three most viable ideas. Then you will enter these ideas into a peer-to-peer collaboration platform to receive feedback from the wisdom of the crowd. You will also rate each of your classmates' three best ideas. Finally, you will develop a one-minute pitch, practice it with a partner, and record it. You and your classmates will view and provide feedback on each other's pitches. By the end of this course, you will have selected your best product or service idea and prepared a polished pitch to present to stakeholders.

To be successful in this course you will need to come prepared with a list of at least 30 ideas for new products and services.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Use your own expertise to select a subset of your best product and service ideas.
• Rate product and service ideas through a peer-to-peer digital platform.
• Prepare and receive feedback on a one-minute pitch video for your best idea.
  

Staying Relevant

CTECH113 - Generating Opportunities for Digital Disruption

COURSE OVERVIEW

In this course, you will apply a number of daily ideation techniques to evolve the use of digital tools in your organization. You will evaluate your business model and determine where you can integrate digital tools to better meet your customers' needs and increase profitability. You will then identify niche digital marketplaces that are opportunities to fulfill unmet customer needs. In the culmination of this course, you will gain an extensive toolkit for developing new ideas throughout your organization or for your entrepreneurial ventures.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Generate ideas for new products and services.
• Use product and service design, business model transformation, and sales transformation templates to generate new ideas.
  

Staying Relevant

CTECH112 - Rapid Ideation

COURSE OVERVIEW

In this course, you will learn best practices to quickly generate multiple ideas for new ventures. You will flex your creative muscles by using tools and activities daily to expand your list of ideas. Then, you will apply your best practices to a number of product and service design, business model transformation, and sales transformation templates to devise ideas for new products and services. By the end of this course, you will have over 100 ideas for new products or services that you can begin to refine.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Generate ideas for new products and services.
• Use digital transformation and new marketplace templates to generate new ideas.

Staying Relevant

CTECH111 - Preparing for Digital Transformation

COURSE OVERVIEW

All businesses rely on business model evolution through identifying and using new digital tools. In this course, you will identify the best method to choose the best ideas for digital transformation for your organization or entrepreneurial venture. You will conduct a builder audit to assess the current state of the innovation process and establish what the ideal state of building should be. After completing the builder audit, you will produce a digitization audit, where you will assess the current state of digital tools utilization in sourcing, organizational processes, customer interaction, and after-sales. This analysis will lead you to identify opportunities for digital technology use.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Conduct a builder audit to assess product ideation at your organization.
• Assess the gap between the current state and the ideal state.
• Perform a digitization audit to assess the implementation of digital tools.
• Identify opportunities for digital transformation.
  

Staying Relevant

CTECH301 - Creating Advantage Through Entrepreneurial Thinking

COURSE OVERVIEW

Entrepreneurship has become more than just a short-term initiative, becoming an essential component of any successful organization. In this course, students will learn to identify, assess, and implement new business opportunities within established organizations to drive and maintain competitive advantage. After completing this course, students will not only be able to formulate business models and develop processes to maximize entrepreneurial abilities, but also increase the overall entrepreneurial spirit of their organizations.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset in how you approach new business opportunities within an existing firm.
• Assemble the necessary tangible and intangible resources for realizing new opportunities.
• Establish organizational processes and systems that balance risk and rewards of new ideas to maximize the potential for success.
• Scale and sustain new entrepreneurial opportunities in order to drive competitive advantage.
  

Staying Relevant

Change, Disruption and Growth (LSM312)

COURSE OVERVIEW

Change can be a highly profitable opportunity for growth, or it can sink a once-successful business. How should you and your organization prepare to adapt and even thrive in the face of change and disruption?

In this course, you will acquire the tools you need to evaluate change, disruption, and uncertainty in your industry. You will implement key frameworks designed to help you strategize in changing and uncertain environments. The skills you hone in this course will prepare you to succeed in dynamic market environments and think clearly about the future.

Of course, strategies for change risk failing if the organization as a whole is not willing or prepared to implement them. To pave the way for truly successful implementation of the strategies you devise, you will identify and mitigate critical internal challenges and resistance to change, thereby enabling your organization to eliminate roadblocks to growth.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

Assess change, disruption and uncertainty in your industry.

• Evaluate how your organization can respond successfully to change and devise appropriate strategies to do so.
• Identify and mitigate challenges to change within your organization.

Staying Relevant

Value Creation and Profitability (LSM311)

COURSE OVERVIEW

Increasing and sustaining profitability requires that you deliver unique value to consumers while guarding against competitive threats. Developing a successful strategy requires recognizing and planning for the specific challenges in your market so as to avoid costly mistakes, seize new opportunities, and raise long-run profits.

In this course, you will explore a variety of real-world examples and powerful frameworks to supercharge your strategy and profitability. You will analyze how your organization currently creates value and strategize how best to create new value for your targeted customers, beyond what rivals offer. You will then develop your organizational plan, identifying which resources and partners are essential for success, while also identifying which key resources you should own to help sustain long-run profitability. You will perform an in-depth competitive analysis of threats to the profitability of a firm, allowing you both to identify threats in your current market and assess the prospects for profitability in other markets which you might enter. You will develop tactics to mitigate each of these threats to profitability, while also recognizing the power and potential of working towards win-win situations with complementors.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Perform a market diagnosis to describe your target customers and determine how you can best create value for them.
• Develop a plan to align your organizational resources with your value creation objectives.
• Identify and assess threats to your organization's profits.
• Select appropriate strategies to mitigate these and other threats you may encounter.
  

Staying Relevant

Developing and Communicating Vision and Strategy (LSM632)

COURSE OVERVIEW

Organizations that instill a clear vision and an effective business strategy at all levels are far more likely to succeed in our increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. But before you can effectively define and impart your vision and business strategy to your organization, you must analyze and have a comprehensive understanding of the various facets of your operating environment. In this course, you will explore effective ways to achieve these goals with General George W. Casey, Jr. You will objectively assess the three critical dimensions of your operating environment (internal, external, and competitive) using the VUCA index so you can identify potential vulnerabilities and opportunities for your organization. You will then identify the characteristics of an effective vision statement and outline a clear vision for your organization. Finally, you will outline a plan to instill your vision and business strategy in your organization.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS 

• Leverage a framework for understanding your operating environment to develop a vision and strategy to propel your organization forward.
• Avoid making judgments on incomplete information.
• Construct an effective vision statement.
• Develop a strategy to accomplish the organizational vision.
• Develop a clear and succinct communications plan to implement your strategy.

Staying Relevant

Leading in a VUCA World (LSM631)

COURSE OVERVIEW

VUCA is an acronym that stands for “volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.” Learn from General George W. Casey, Jr. how leaders understand and counteract the impacts of the VUCA world to lead more effectively today. In this course, you will gain insights into how you can identify and reduce the impact of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in your workplace, elevating your opportunity to succeed. You will match your strengths and weaknesses with the leadership characteristics essential in today's VUCA world to formulate an action plan to guide you in improving your leadership skills. Finally, you will develop skills to improve your vision, courage, and character, ultimately preparing you to lead in a VUCA world.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Identify the impacts of and antidotes for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
• Identify the new and unique leadership characteristics needed for the VUCA world.
• Match key leadership characteristics to your own strengths and weaknesses.
• Determine the importance of character and leadership.
• Develop skills to improve your personal prerequisites.
  

Staying Relevant

Courage, Humility and Compassion (LSM643)

COURSE OVERVIEW

Strong leaders are self-confident. They know and are comfortable with themselves and have an appropriate understanding of their knowledge and skills. Strong leaders' confidence and character inspire others to follow the leaders and to reach beyond themselves.

In this course, you will work to develop the three character dimensions of courage, humility, and compassion. On the surface, these dimensions may seem contradictory (humility and courage?). However, through the following lessons, you will see how developing resilience for courage, willfulness for humility, and strength for compassion work together to create a leader of strong character.

Completion of the course Building Leadership Character is required prior to starting this course.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Improve interpersonal confidence by demonstrating courage, humility, and compassion.
• Plan to demonstrate courage in a situation based on your values and your assessment of risks.
• Improve your humility level through perspective-taking practice.
• Apply a compassion model to a situation of suffering.
• Use mindfulness tools to increase self-compassion.

Staying Relevant

Authenticity, Integrity and Accountability (LSM642)

COURSE OVERVIEW

Trust is an essential element in character and how you are perceived by others. The character dimensions authenticity, integrity, and accountability are intertwined with your ability to build trusting relationships. In this course, we will discuss how to develop these character dimensions which will, in turn, help you build trusting relationships and become an effective leader.

Completion of the course Building Leadership Character is required prior to starting this course.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Use tools to reflect on and develop your authenticity at work.
• Communicate with integrity.
• Demonstrate and encourage accountability.

Staying Relevant

Building Leadership Character (LSM641)

COURSE OVERVIEW

Leaders make the headlines on a regular basis – for their successes and their gaffes. After a particularly awful decision makes the news, do you ever wonder how that person could make such a dumb mistake? Mistakes and successes don't happen in a vacuum. They are generally a culmination of decisions and actions the leader makes. But where do those decisions come from? Almost always, the leader's character plays a role in decision-making and communications.

In this course, you will take the first steps on a lifetime journey of developing the character that will enable you to be the leader you envision.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Create a vision of the leader you want to become.
  
• Develop a practice of regular self-reflection to build leadership character.
• Implement new strategies to manage failure intellectually, emotionally, and/or physically.
• Develop personal connections by demonstrating vulnerability.
  

Staying Relevant

Preparing for the Future (LSM635)

COURSE OVERVIEW

In our VUCA world, it is easy to feel weighed down by daily issues. You can become so consumed by the difficulties of the present moment that you neglect to look ahead and analyze your larger mission. Yet as a leader, you have to be able to step back from the challenges that each day brings and assess the big picture. You have to help your people envision what the future looks like. Even the most skilled leaders agree that this is not easy. However, there are concrete measures you can take to prepare for future success.

In this course, you will learn how to develop a plan to evaluate your organization's ability to accomplish its vision and strategy. You will apply Lewin's three-stage model of change to enable your organization's continuous adaptation and devise a plan that demonstrates how you will sustain progress. Finally, you will apply the read, exercise, sleep, and think (REST) model to take care of yourself and remain effective as a leader.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Conduct continuous assessment and adaptation.
  
• Plan for sustained momentum.
• Prepare for what you can't control.
• Take care of yourself — REST — to remain effective as a leader.
  

Staying Relevant

Setting Internal and External Conditions for Success (LSM634)

COURSE OVERVIEW

Success does not just happen. Successful leaders figure out what matters most to their success and go out and make it happen. This has never been an easy process, but in today's world it has become even more difficult: The volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments that confront organizations today require a new breed of leaders. To lead and succeed in a VUCA world, leaders must now be adept at building consensus and influencing people who are outside their direct control but whose cooperation is essential to the success of their efforts.

In this course, you will develop a checklist to help you determine the most important elements required to execute your vision and strategy. You will establish a sphere of influence that can provide external support and determine the most important elements required to accomplish your vision and strategy. Finally, you will prepare for unexpected challenges.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Work across the value chain to refine your views and adjust what you need to accomplish the vision both internally and externally.
• Align the internal culture of your organization with your vision and strategy so that you control what you can.
• Establish an external sphere of influence to support your ability to accomplish your vision and strategy so that you can influence what you don't control.
  

Staying Relevant

Coaching Skills for Leaders (LSM584)

COURSE OVERVIEW

Coaching is about building relationships—and it's essential in order for your organization to move forward together to achieve better results. Being an effective coach requires skills that can be practiced and mastered, including listening, building credibility and trust, and showing empathy. In this course, Cornell University's Dr. Samuel Bacharach, will help you distinguish between coaching and traditional supervision. You will identify the five functions of coaching and the rules for having coaching conversations. Finally, you will examine some of the classic coaching mistakes that people often make and identify how you can avoid repeating those mistakes yourself.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Clarify the goals of coaching.
• Examine coaching as a relationship.
• Identify the five functions of coaching.
• Explore the critical aspects of a coaching culture.
  

Staying Relevant

Negotiation Skills (LSM589)

COURSE OVERVIEW

Being able to negotiate is a practical, everyday skill that is critical for anyone working within an organization. The good news is it's a skill you can practice and master. Negotiation skills are ones you can use in any context and, once you master the behaviors of effective negotiation, you will use all the time. In this course, developed by Cornell University's Professor Samuel Bacharach, Ph.D., you will develop an awareness that every conversation is a negotiation, and you will identify the critical components of effective negotiation.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Identify strategies for preparing for a negotiation.
  
• Explore critical decisions such as when to negotiate, when not to negotiate, whether you should make the opening move in a negotiation, and how many issues you want to put on the table.
• Categorize and prioritize the issues to be negotiated.
• Define the negotiation interaction at the tactical and emotional level.
  

Staying Relevant

Leading for Creativity and Innovation (LSM587)

COURSE OVERVIEW

One of the challenges organizations face today is how to innovate. Innovation has become the modus operandi of organizational life. Every organization needs to innovate quickly to stay competitive. But what does “innovation” really mean?

In simple terms, innovation is the practical application of creative ideas to drive organizational results; innovation results in something useful that benefits the organization. In this course, Cornell University's Professor Samuel Bacharach, Ph.D., clears away common misconceptions about the mystery surrounding this popular buzzword and identifies how individuals can harness creative energy to drive innovative results. Students will identify strategies for encouraging divergent thinking and examine methods of fostering a culture of innovation.

KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS

• Examine your own organization through the lens of innovation.
  
• Use a recommended framework for generating new ideas.
• Map significant innovations within your organization, field, or industry.
• Consider how the organizational structure in place fosters (or inhibits) innovation.
• Identify recommended best practices for fostering innovation.