Certificate Program in Creativity
& Innovation

This certificate program is in development and is planned for 2008. The training program is designed for entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and executive managers who are concerned with:

• Creating unique intellectual property
• Developing efficient and effective business systems
• Unleashing individual and team creativity at each stage of organizational development

The importance of this certificate program is illustrated by the recently published book entitled: Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back. This book is a key text for this program. It sounds the urgent call for the entrepreneurial spirit of innovation in every area of business and industry in America.

The author, John Kao, is a former Harvard Business School professor and current business consultant. In reviewing this book, Peter Schwartz, Chairman of Global Business Network said the following:

"A nation's capacity for innovation will determine whether it will be rich and powerful or poor and weak. In his insightful exploration of the world of innovation, John Kao makes clear the challenge that America faces as its own capacity for innovation erodes even as the rest of the world's abilities are growing. America's postition of power and wealth will be determined by whether it can rise to meet the challenge of the innovation agenda that Kao lucidly sets out."

This certification program teaches strategy, tactics and methods to implement the following creativity and innovation practices:

• "The crucial variable in the process of turning knowledge into value is creativity." — John Kao
  
  
• "Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship "
  the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth." — Peter Drucker
  
  
• "The entrepreneur is essentially a visualizer and actualizer...
  He can visualize something, and when he visualizes it
  he sees exactly how to make it happen." — Robert L. Schwartz
  
  
• "Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun." —
  Mary Lou Cook
  
  
• "The essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail."
  — Edwin H. Land