Business Innovation Certificate

Make strategic choices and turn ideas into reality

Learn an accessible and actionable process to do the work of innovation, no matter your role or industry. This process helps you imagine new strategic possibilities, quickly and inexpensively test to de-risk these possibilities, and build compelling business cases to grow confidence and consensus.

In this program, you’ll learn how to merge creative thinking with analytical rigor, develop ways to grow influence around your ideas, and get to bold, new products and services faster—all while staying tightly aligned with the needs of your customers and the realities of your business or organization. Whether you work in business, government, education, or nonprofit, this certificate will help you drive and follow through on innovative initiatives.

Certificate Program Outcomes
  • Learn a process to make strategic choices centered on both the needs of your customers as well as your business or organization.
  • Follow repeatable steps to imagine and test strategic initiatives that combine analytical rigor and creativity, and equip you with confidence to move these initiatives forward.
  • Gain techniques to quickly develop, test, and iterate parts of a business model (value proposition, revenue model, and channel) to make new programs, products, and services that are grounded in what people really want.
  • Apply methods from design thinking (such as brainstorming, prototyping, and iteration) to business modeling and strategy.
  • Grow your skills and confidence to undertake, plan, and lead day-to-day strategic efforts, as well as broad wide-scale innovation initiatives.
Skills You’ll Gain
Strategy Business Modeling Prototyping
Format 2 Online Cohort Courses
Duration 2-3 Months*
Time 4 Hours/Week
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*Enroll in any September cohort course or certificate to get exclusive access to our new AI x Design Thinking Workshop Series.

Certificate Program Overview

While courses can be taken in any order, we recommend completing Designing Strategy first

  1. 1 Take Designing Strategy

    Starting Soon
    Unite rigor and creativity to create a successful strategy
    Cohort Course 5 Weeks
    Regular price
    $799
    Sale price
    $799
    Unit price
    per 
  2. 2 Take Designing a Business

    Starting Soon
    Build and test new business ideas
    Cohort Course 5 Weeks
    Regular price
    $799
    Sale price
    $799
    Unit price
    per 


  1. 3 Receive and Share Your Certificate

    After completing the two courses, you’ll receive your Business Innovation Certificate of completion via email as a downloadable PDF within 1-2 weeks of completing the final required course. Certificates are configured for uploading and sharing on LinkedIn.

    Your IDEO U Certificate in Business Innovation

Commonly Asked Questions

  • Course Order
    We recommend you take Designing Strategy first to learn how to surface the bigger challenge you’re facing, come up with possibilities to tackle it, and test to make a strategic choice. Then, take Designing a Business to learn how to efficiently brainstorm and prototype parts of any new business model that underpins your strategic initiatives.

    This is only a recommended order. Some people prefer to take Designing a Business first because they are ready to work on building a business model or business case, and are looking for ways to test their assumptions early. We recommend that they come back to take Designing Strategy to help them learn a creative and grounded process to make tough choices that they will inevitably face along the way.

    Because of the depth contained in these two courses, we do not recommend taking both courses at once.
  • I work at a (non-profit, school, government, startup, small business). Is this program right for me?
    Short answer: yes. Though some of the frameworks and thinking in these courses are rooted in business, they’re still highly applicable to anyone who wants to drive innovative initiatives at work and grow ideas, confidence, and influence in their organization. In both Designing Strategy and Designing a Business, case studies, terms, and examples were created to help different individuals see themselves and their organizations in the work.
  • Completion Time
    The program typically takes between 3-4 months to complete if courses are taken consecutively. However, there is no deadline for certificate completion.
  • Certificate Requirements
    If you’ve completed either Designing Strategy or Designing a Business as a part of another certificate program or on its own, it will count toward your certificate of completion.
Learn more about program details in our FAQs

Certificate Program Requirements

Frequently Asked Questions

We offer three types of courses: self-paced courses, cohort courses, and certificate programs. Certificate programs consist of multiple courses and typically take 3-6 months to complete. They are in-depth learning experiences designed to grow your skills and broaden your professional impact. Once you complete all required courses, you will be awarded a certificate of completion.

All of our certificate programs are fully online and flexible, so you can take them from any time zone, anywhere in the world. For cohort courses, the course teaching team will host scheduled virtual community conversations, which are optional. Times will be announced during the first week of the course and are set to accommodate as many time zones as possible.

If you take all required courses in a certificate, you will receive the certificate. There is no deadline for the completion of the courses, and you do not have to purchase all required courses at the same time to be eligible for a certificate.

While you can enroll in multiple courses at the same time, we strongly advise that you do so only if you are able to commit to a minimum of 5 hours per week for each course (for example, 10 hours per week for 2 courses) to ensure the most valuable learning experience. If that does not feel feasible, we recommend taking the courses separately and reviewing upcoming course dates on our course calendar.

While courses can be taken in any order, we recommend you take them in the order that they are listed above in the Certificate Program Overview.

We offer a discount when you enroll in multiple courses at the same time through some of our certificate programs, including Foundations in Design ThinkingBusiness InnovationHuman-Centered Strategy, and Communicating for Impact

You can also enter your email address at the bottom of this page in order to receive updates on future offers or possible discounts. 

Absolutely! We have had many teams go through our courses together. For those taking our courses as a team, we provide a number of additional benefits:

1. A Team Learning Guide, developed to provide your team with resources to facilitate offline discussions that complement the in-course experience.

2. A Manage Learners function, which provides visibility into your team's progress within the course.

3. The ability to create a private Learning Circle, which is a closed space for discussion on the learning platform specifically for your team.

For more information, visit our Team Learning page.

You can purchase a certificate by enrolling in all the courses associated with that certificate. Required courses are listed in the Certificate Program Overview section above. When you click enroll in each cohort course, you will proceed to our checkout page, where you can select your desired cohort date for each course.

Payment options include credit card, PayPal, or Shop Pay. For US customers, we also offer installment plans at checkout if you use the Shop Pay method of payment.We typically are not able to accommodate bank transfer or invoicing. However, if your order includes 10 seats or more, please contact hello@ideou.com and our team will be happy to review your request

Yes. Since you work in such complex systems, this certificate will be beneficial in helping you create change or navigate change within the system you’re working in. Though some of the frameworks and thinking in these courses are rooted in business, they’re still highly applicable to anyone who wants to create change or lead others through change. The case studies, terms, and examples were designed to help different individuals see themselves and their organizations in the work.

Loved by Learners Across the Globe

Carolina Barbosa
Carolina Service and Business Designer Accenture Interactive
Lizardo Hernandez
Lizardo Director Solutions Management Landis+Gyr
Zulaikha Rahman
Zulaikha Founder & Principal Design Strategist Empathy Spark
Perla Montelongo
Perla Co-founder and Director Node Center for Curatorial Studies
Business Innovation Certificate
Certificate Program

“It's the best online course I've taken. The mentors on the videos made the theory very easy to understand, the feedback helps you improve what you learned, the workbook is simple and clear, and the cases were very practical. With this course, you learn a lot about strategy and have a lot of fun.”

Carolina Colombia
Business Innovation Certificate
Certificate Program

"This course brought a new perspective to the traditional strategy building sessions. It will challenge old practitioners with concepts of seeking external validation prior to selecting a strategic choice.”

Lizardo Alpharetta, Georgia
Business Innovation Certificate
Certificate Program

“These courses build concepts that help us expand our thinking and focus on things that we probably weren't thinking before.”

Zulaikha New Delhi, India
Business Innovation Certificate
Certificate Program

“I really like that videos are short but you can explore deeper through the suggested links. The most important aspect for me is how the course pushes us to put into practice what we’ve learned and then get feedback.”

Perla Berlin, Germany

The IDEO U Learning Experience

See

Our courses engage you through stories, expertise, and humor. Each lesson has a series of 3-5 minute videos that explain the why, what, and how of a specific topic. Plus we bring everything to life through case studies from around the globe.

Reflect

Our learning experiences have a variety of reflective activities to help you make the connections to your specific work challenges. Reflection is one of the most effective ways to deepen your professional impact.

Try

In order to develop new skills, you need to try them out through repeated practice and exposure to new contexts. Our courses provide opportunities to try out new behaviors online and through real-world projects.

Share

Knowledge is constructed through interaction with others—which is the foundation of our cohort experience. It’s through sharing and discussing with qualified teaching leads and a global peer network that you build greater understanding.

See

Our courses engage you through stories, expertise, and humor. Each lesson has a series of 3-5 minute videos that explain the why, what, and how of a specific topic. Plus we bring everything to life through case studies from around the globe.

Try

In order to develop new skills, you need to try them out through repeated practice and exposure to new contexts. Our courses provide opportunities to try out new behaviors online and through real-world projects.

Reflect

Our learning experiences have a variety of reflective activities to help you make the connections to your specific work challenges. Reflection is one of the most effective ways to deepen your professional impact.

Share

Knowledge is constructed through interaction with others—which is the foundation of our cohort experience. It’s through sharing and discussing with qualified teaching leads and a global peer network that you build greater understanding.

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