HEC Paris
Certificate

Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship University Certificate

Gain hands-on management skills and know-how in innovation and entrepreneurship from the #1 business school in Europe.

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Enroll by March 25, 2024

Onboarding starts June 17, 2024

5 months

6-10 hours per week

$4,000

Eligible for CPF funding

100% online

+Live session classes.

Unlock your entrepreneurial potential and kickstart your innovation journey

Build leadership skills with HEC Paris

#1 Business School in Europe by the Financial Times for four consecutive years.

Be Job-Ready

Gain career-relevant skills that attract attention from recruiters and hiring managers.

Accelerate your path to a MSc degree from HEC Paris

If you are admitted to the full MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship program, your University Certificate will count towards your degree.

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Program description

Develop an entrepreneurial mindset and drive innovation

Overview

Download the Program Booklet

This online certificate program equips busy executives and entrepreneurs with the know-how and practical skills they need to find creative solutions to innovation challenges. It will help you develop an entrepreneurial mindset and capitalize on your strengths to create a new business venture or an intrapreneurial project in your current organization.

You’ll learn to seize new opportunities, drive innovation, and design and implement a strategy. You’ll also discover how to develop appropriate social media and marketing approaches.

Program Objectives:

  • Project yourself into all the key steps lying ahead for your entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial project
  • Focus on business strategy and effective implementation - key success factors, sources of competitive advantage
  • Choose the appropriate product development process for your project, by integrating both customer input and supply constraints throughout the process
  • Develop an outstanding pitch to present your ideas to investors, partners, and other stakeholders
  • Understand "state of the art" social entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship
  • Implement an effective social media strategy to reach and engage with your stakeholders

Learning Methods:

The aim of our innovative, action-based learning approach is to strike the right balance between theory and practice. As well as the pre-established online courses, you will also have access to program features such as graded feedback from instructors, live instruction from HEC Paris’ world-renowned faculty, and the opportunity to study with a cohort of high-level peers.

Required background

You should have an undergraduate education or a professional interest in innovation and business development, whether for an entrepreneurial venture or for launching new projects within your current organization.

The language of instruction is 100% English. Thus, fluency in English (CEFR C1 level minimum) is mandatory to succeed in this program.

This program is accessible for people with disabilities. Please contact us if you have any specific requirements or to obtain the Public Accessibility Register.

From University Certificate learner to Master of Science:

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Skills you will gain

  • Product or services development
  • Business strategy formulation
  • Business strategy implementation
  • Strategic management of a start-up or innovative project
  • Business modelling
  • Social entrepreneurship
  • Pitch development
  • Marketing and social media strategy implementation

5 courses in this 5-month program

Course 1 of 5

Entrepreneurship Strategy: From Ideation to Exit

Overview

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 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.

Course 2 of 5

Business Strategy

Overview

  • Understand your firm's competitive advantage as well as how to maintain and enhance it to stay ahead of the competition.
  • Analyze how a firm’s external environment (i.e. its competitors, suppliers, customers) as well as its internal capabilities and resources shape competitive advantage.
  • Develop a critical mindset when confronted with complex choices.

Course 3 of 5

New Product Development

Overview

  • Acquire a broad understanding of how to manage the new product development process.
  • Learn how to develop new products quickly enough to respond to new market opportunities or successfully bring new technological breakthroughs to market.
  • Understand why in spite of huge investments in innovation, many products fail to meet their sales targets

Course 4 of 5

Social Entrepreneurship and Changemaking

Overview

  • Gain a brief overview of different types of entrepreneurs who create value for society.
  • Work on your own entrepreneurial project and gain hands-on experience in transforming an idea into a sustainable business model with measurable positive impact on society and the environment.
  • Develop a pitch to sell your idea to a wider public.
  • Be inspired, equipped and convinced that you can take positive action to tackle the world’s most pressing problems in an entrepreneurial manner.

Course 5 of 5

Marketing Through Social Media

Overview

  • Understand the importance of word of mouth and consumer communities as market forces that influence decision-making throughout the purchasing process.
  • Learn how social media can be leveraged both in B2C and B2B contexts to better understand, connect with and accompany your customers.

Earn credit toward a MSc degree from HEC Paris, offered 100% online.

Take the next step in your education to boost your career. This University Certificate is a building block that offers you a pathway to a degree while also providing job-relevant skills today.

HEC Paris

Certificate

Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship University Certificate

Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship University Certificate Certificate Earn credit towards:

If you apply and gain admission to HEC Paris’ 100% online MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, credits earned from this program will carry over as you pursue your full degree. If you do not opt to continue learning, you still receive an official certificate for completing this program.

Instructors

Frequently asked questions

Coursera does not grant academic credit; the decision to grant, accept, or recognize academic credit, and the process for awarding such credit, is at the sole discretion of the academic institutions offering the University Certificate program and/or other institutions that have determined that completion of the program may be worthy of academic credit. Completion of a University Certificate program does not guarantee admission into the full MSc program referenced herein, or any other degree program.