You Can Innovate

Heads up! This course may be archived and/or unavailable.

You Can Innovate prepares you for the MIT Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp!

The bootcamp is a one-week, intensive entrepreneurship education program that challenges you to start a company in 5 days. The Bootcamp offers you the unique opportunity to be mentored by MIT faculty and MIT alumni entrepreneurs and investors as you begin your new entrepreneurial journey

This course is not only for those planning to attend the Bootcamp, this course will teach you how to develop your ideas for innovative ventures whether you continue to the Bootcamp or not.

We’ll let you in on a secret. Innovation happens everywhere. More often than not, it is about ordinary people solving problems that matter to them personally. This could be you.

Examples of user innovation are infinite. A surfer created the GoPro to take “selfies” while surfing. A student came up with Dropbox after forgetting his flash drive. Two broke entrepreneurs rented out their living room to help pay rent, and Airbnb was born. They’ll share their paths to startup success.

Taught by Eric von Hippel, the founding scholar of user innovation, this course will help you think about what problems you should choose to solve and how to share your innovations with others.

This course is terrific for:

• Aspiring entrepreneurs searching for ideas for innovation;
• Inveterate inventors searching for ways to diffuse their innovations;
• Entrepreneurship educators looking for practical methods for meaningful ideation.  

You Can Innovate has also been valuable for policymakers who work to energize the innovation ecosystems in their regions and for innovators within established companies working to anticipate or, better, productively engage with disruptive innovations.  

If you are applying to the MIT Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp through this course, please enroll in the Verified Certificate track and apply to the Bootcamp at bootcamp.mit.edu by January 31, 2017, the cost of the certificate for this course will go towards the cost of the Bootcamp. The next Bootcamp occurs on March 25–31, 2017.

In the Verified track, the MIT course team composed of Faculty, Teaching Fellows, and Alumni Mentors, will review, grade and provide feedback on your assignments.  In the Verified track you will also be enrolled in weekly review and discussion sessions.  

You can innovate.