The Moore School has launched a Strategic Innovation Certificate to account for growing demand for strategic-oriented managers of science, technology and innovation in the workforce.
Designed for working professionals and graduate students, the certificate program prepares students to successfully navigate rapid technological changes across industries to help companies and organizations remain competitive in their fields.
Company success is driven by innovation and change in the 21st century, whereby in previous centuries, success was driven by scale and scope, and today’s companies, nonprofits and other organizations must continuously evolve to even stay relevant among other agile entities, according to the Moore School’s Laura B. Cardinal, the SmartState Endowed Chair, director of the Center for Innovation + Commercialization.
The program features three core strategic management courses with an elective course to match career goals. Students can build strategic innovation into areas such as analytics, enterprising resource planning systems, design thinking, cybersecurity, human capital, or stakeholder networks; the elective choices allow students to customize their experience according to their priorities or industry.
Two new course prototypes were developed by the SmartState Center for Innovation + Commercialization and piloted with Professional MBA program students. One course saw students collaborating with two SmartState Centers and two South Carolina companies to apply new technologies in aerospace manufacturing to prosthetic limbs. The other course was created by Cardinal based on her 30+ years of research, teaching and working with managers in the area of innovation; the culmination of her knowledge is based on seeing firsthand what experiences, knowledge, human capital and organizational routines and processes need to be in place for companies to succeed at innovation.
Succeeding at innovation is especially important for students in the Professional MBA program, a flexible, part-time MBA program designed for working professionals from all industries who are looking to gain the skills and connections needed to advance their careers. Skills like strategic innovation not only help them accelerate their careers but also to transition to leaders within their organization or industry.
Learn more about the Strategic Innovation Certificate.