Idea Development

Learn skills and listen to examples from world-renown entrepreneurs and innovators as they discuss the parallels between the creative and entrepreneurial journeys -- and why entrepreneurship, much like music or creativity, is something we all possess.

Glenn Gaudette, Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Event coordinated by Residence Hall Council and Omicron Delta Kappa.

This course looks at how individuals and organizations use creativity and design thinking skills to identify and choose opportunities that enable innovation. Creative problem solving skills are developed and enhanced through a range of real world activities. An overview of design thinking tools is provided to help students understand design thinking as a problem solving approach. Ideas developed through these processes are then applied to a customer discovery approach to understand their value in the market place.

In this course, we provide an overview of design thinking and work with a model containing four key questions and several tools to help you understand design thinking as a problem solving approach. We also look at several stories from different organizations that used design thinking to uncover compelling solutions.

Learn how a user-centered approach and design thinking principles inspire innovative ideas to create desirable solutions.

This course assists aspiring and active entrepreneurs in developing great ideas into great companies. With strong economies presenting rich opportunities for new venture creation, and challenging economic times presenting the necessity for many to make their own job, the need to develop the skills to develop and act on innovative business opportunities is increasingly vital.

After this course, the entrepreneur will be able to assess entrepreneurial opportunities through the perspective of both business and social impact. The tools will enable entrepreneur to turn these opportunities into viable social solutions and maximize impact.

Learn how to be a successful entrepreneur by understanding how to evaluate business opportunities and ideas.

In this course you can learn: 1. Learn what it takes to become a “technopreneur”, 2. Explore various methods for identifying opportunities, 3. Learn how to conduct market research and provide evidence for the viability of the business idea, 4. Develop a viable business proposition and learn to pitch your ideas for various audiences, 5. Understand the dynamics of new venture development and team building, 6. Develop the ability to translate a business idea into marketing and financial plans.

This course covers in the chronological order each defining step of an entrepreneurial project. It begins with very personal considerations related to getting to better know yourself better so as to decide if you are ready for the multiple challenges of entrepreneurship. It then deals with creativity in order to provide the right set of tools to find an idea with the right potential to disrupt an existing business. We then discuss how to gather a founding team, how to raise money to initiate the project, and how to deal with day to day cash management. Later in the course, we discuss the art of selling, focusing on business to business sales, and how to measure the product launch phase using cohort analysis. Later on, we discuss the challenges of HR in an entrepreneurial environment, and of recruiting at a point where nobody knows your company. We then describe very practical techniques to initiate the international development of a small company. Last, we cover the exit strategy topic.

Learn a systematic, scientific and iterative process for identifying, evaluating and testing entrepreneurial opportunities.

Learn how to rapidly develop and test ideas by gathering massive amounts of customer and marketplace feedback. Many startups fail by not validating their ideas early on with real-life customers. In order to mitigate that, students will learn how to get out of the building and search for the real pain points and unmet needs of customers. Only with these can the entrepreneur find a proper solution and establish a suitable business model.

Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, and Dustin Moskovitz, Cofounder of Facebook, Asana, and Good Ventures, kick off the How to Start a Startup Course. Sam covers the first 2 of the 4 Key Areas: Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution; and Dustin discusses Why to Start a Startup.

In this course you will learn: 1. How to come up with innovative ideas you are uniquely position to create and bring to market, 2. Strategies for managing uncertainty in the creation and implementation of innovative ideas, 3. How to learn from setbacks and maintain the motivation to persevere when experiencing them, 4. How ideas and other forms of intellectual property can be protected.

Inspiration for a new product or service can come out of the blue or from a very deliberate search. Once an idea strikes, what processes are the most effective to determine if the idea is substantial to start a new venture? How does someone solicit and incorporate feedback to morph the idea to make it viable? How does the evaluation process impact decisions on how to structure and fund the next stage of development?

Learn today’s newest skills and tools for identifying and acting on entrepreneurial opportunities for startup companies and corporate innovations.

This course is aimed at everyone with an interest in entrepreneurship and innovation. This includes graduate and undergraduate students, current, past, and future entrepreneurs, managers of innovative firms, or managers in charge of leading innovation in their company. There is no formal prerequisite for this course.

A renowned innovation expert shows how to spark your creativity for career development in 5 proven steps: 1. Solve a problem that calls for a new approach, 2. Identify habitual ways of thinking and find novel alternatives, 3. Use thinking tools such as analogy, reversal, expansion, narrowing, changing point-of-view, 4. Find the best innovative approach to solve specific problems, 5. Spread what you’ve learned and effectively communicate your ideas.

In this course you will learn: 1. Assess product ideas for rapid development and commercialization. 2. Understand the start-up team, develop partnerships, and produce a prototype. 3. Prepare and evaluate strategies to identify and court the vital first few customers. 4. Anticipate organizational challenges to motivating and leading the start-up team. 5. Develop key steps toward making a pitch and negotiating a deal with venture capitalists or seed investors.

Uncover the secrets of thinking like an entrepreneur to create value for stakeholders and society across a variety of business settings. Understand the fundamental concepts and analytical tools that help assess opportunities and develop entrepreneurial ventures, and how these concepts and tools may be applied to real world business situations and opportunities.

Discover the entrepreneur inside of you – learn what it takes to turn an idea into a real business and how to put this approach to use within your own company.

IDEO Founder and CEO David Kelley kept an audience rapt with his revolutionary simple notions of humanizing design and unleashing the creative potential within us all.