Overview

Class Central Tips

This course, which is Part Three in the series of Startup Entrepreneurship specialization, offers Life Lessons from a Master Innovator, with proven achievements. During this course you will listen to conversations and interviews with Mr. David (Dadi) Perlmutter, who until recently was Executive VP of Intel corporate. Dadi will talk about 10 life lessons, based on his 34 years as a rebel innovator and entrepreneur.

We will share with you the following lessons:
Love and Knowledge are infinite: grow and share;
Learn from Failures and Successes;
Nothing Moves without a Vision;
Have a Differentiated Market Transforming Strategy;
Dare to Take Action;
Fight Resistance;
It is All About the Ecosystem;
Build a Team;
Keep it Simple and Work Hard.

By the end of the course the learner will:
* Know how to lead a process of innovation and implement ideas through all its phases from discovery to delivery in your own field of choice.
* Know how to apply creativity to generate creative ideas in a wide range of strategic management issues.
* Know how to solve problems in general, with a high degree of innovative creative thinking, to widen the range of possible choices
* Identify new and unfamiliar challenges and needs, reflect on them from a creative point of view (zoom in), decide on the
action they require (zoom out) and generate a novel and useful solution
* Transform ideas into real value-creating products, services and processes.
* Be able to analyze both success and failure and draw conclusions from both, for improving future innovative efforts.
* Be able to identify and create key features of innovative products and services and in doing so, generate strategically differentiated innovations that are unique
* Be able to present your ideas persuasively and overcome resistance.
* Know how to simplify a complex product and make it user friendly.

Course assignments will include participation in two discussion groups and four assignments. In each assignment you will be asked to deal with a question relating to an interview you have seen.

Syllabus

Introduction

A science has laws and rules. But art has no laws or rules. In fact, art is about breaking the rules, to create wonderful new works. Innovation is an art, not a science; it is about breaking the rules intelligently, to create value through novel, useful ideas. The best way to learn the art of innovation, or indeed to learn any art, is from those who have mastered it at the highest level and are willing and able to share their wisdom. In this course, a master innovator, Dadi Perlmutter, shares with Coursera learners what he has learned during 34 years of world-changing innovation at Intel Corp., where he served until recently as Executive Vice President. Perlmutter summarizes over three decades of innovation in ten key lessons, recounted in conversation with Prof. Shlomo Maital. Our hope is that these ten lessons will significantly improve your chances of success as an entrepreneur. At the end of this module you will be able to analyze situations of failure and success, and to draw conclusions for future situations.

Strategy, Action & Resistance

Many highly creative people never get beyond vaguely talking about their ideas. Don’t be like them, Perlmutter counsels. Take action to implement at least some of your ideas. The bigger your idea, the more resistance you will likely encounter. Perlmutter explains how he overcame such resistance, in order to help you do the same. At the end of this module you will be able to define key features of your product or service in order to differentiate it. You will also be able to focus on key ideas in order to fight resistance.

Ecosystem, Team & Simplicity

Innovators and their innovations rarely stand alone. Most innovations are part of large complex ecosystems. Perlmutter counsels you to design your ecosystem to enhance your innovation and offers examples of how he himself did this with the Centrino chipset. He then discusses how innovators can build powerful, effective teams. At the end of this module you will be able to design an ecosystem and build a powerful and effective team. You will also be able to simplify a complex product or service.

Summary & Final Assignment

We began by observing that innovation is about breaking the rules. Nonetheless, experience shows that there are some basic lessons that can be learned from long years of experience, lessons that can help young startup entrepreneurs improve their chances of ultimate success. We hope and trust that Coursera learners have integrated these ten lessons, adapted and expanded them to fit their needs and personalities, and will make them part of their personal toolbox as they set out to use their creativity to change the world. The capstone project, the fourth of four courses in this specialization, will help them learn how to do this.