Innovation Career Lessons from a Master (Coursera)

Innovation Career Lessons from a Master (Coursera)

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.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

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.

Course 3 of 4 in the Startup Entrepreneurship Specialization

Syllabus

WEEK 1
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.

WEEK 2
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.

WEEK 3
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.

WEEK 4
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.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Be Your Best Creative Self (Coursera) Coursera
University of Colorado Boulder

Be Your Best Creative Self (Coursera)

Welcome to Be Your Best Creative Self, the second course in the Personal Development for Professional Success Specialization. This course is for creative professionals who want to work more efficiently and at higher levels of both job satisfaction and success. As students work through this course, they will: learn to make the creative state more reliable and productive, fine-tune their personal brand so that they present themselves positively and accurately, learn basic skills for working with others that will help to avoid traps as well as to enable success.

Jun 22nd 2026
3 Weeks
Essentials of Entrepreneurship: Thinking & Action (Coursera) Coursera
University of California, Irvine

Essentials of Entrepreneurship: Thinking & Action (Coursera)

Success in business can be greatly enhanced with an understanding of key entrepreneurial characteristics and competencies solutions. This interactive course provides potential entrepreneurs with the knowledge of succeeding in an entrepreneurial opportunity. Topics include: how creativity, opportunity and feasibility are best evaluated; business strategies for new businesses; importance of a business plan; achieving success in a new business. At the end of the course students will have the skills and confidence to evaluate starting a business, in addition to becoming more enterprising in how they approach their roles should they decide to work in organizations.

Jun 22nd 2026
4 Weeks
Innovation: From Creativity to Entrepreneurship Capstone (Coursera) Coursera
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Innovation: From Creativity to Entrepreneurship Capstone (Coursera)

The capstone for the specialization will provide a learning experience that integrates across all the courses within it. It will involve analysis of a situation concerning a new enterprise – a venture of one’s own or within a larger organization – to develop the current business model and compare against alternative business models so as to identify potential opportunities and challenges.

Jun 22nd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Fundamentos del Emprendimiento: Pensamiento y Acción (Coursera) Coursera
University of California, Irvine

Fundamentos del Emprendimiento: Pensamiento y Acción (Coursera)

El éxito en los negocios puede aumentar enormemente cuando se comprenden las características de emprendimiento claves y las soluciones basadas en las competencias. En este curso interactivo se brinda el conocimiento que los emprendedores potenciales necesitan para tener éxito en una oportunidad empresarial.

Jun 22nd 2026
4 Weeks
How to Finance and Grow Your Startup – Without VC (Coursera) Coursera
University of London,London Business School

How to Finance and Grow Your Startup – Without VC (Coursera)

Who? If you’re an entrepreneur at any stage of your journey, or even an aspiring one, and you need money to start or grow your business, this course is for you. What? This course will introduce, and help you put to use in your startup, the five models through which your customers can – and will, if you ask them! – fund your business. These five time-tested models have been put to use by entrepreneurial superstars like Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and more. Sadly, though, the five models are rarely talked about and not widely understood. Until now! The five models will be brought to life by the real-world stories of an inspiring collection of incredibly creative entrepreneurs from around the world – including successes and failures – through a series of captivating no-holds-barred interviews with founders and others, and investors, too.

Jun 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Geodesign: Change Your World (Coursera) Coursera
Pennsylvania State University

Geodesign: Change Your World (Coursera)

What happens when creativity and science come together? The power to design our world is unleashed, providing tools to inform choices about how we live! Geodesign is the glue—it’s a process that deploys creativity to connect information to people, using collaboration to better inform how we design our world.

Jun 22nd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Entrepreneurship I: Laying the Foundation (Coursera) Coursera
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Entrepreneurship I: Laying the Foundation (Coursera)

This course will explore the earlier stages of the entrepreneurial venture process across four modules. The modules will examine the nature of growth and error in entrepreneurial settings and how to manage resources in those settings. In addition, the modules will explore the emergence and existence of entrepreneurial opportunities, the formulation of ideas in relation to those opportunities, and how those opportunities and ideas influence entrepreneurial phenomena.

Jun 22nd 2026
4 Weeks
Business Models for Innovative Care for Older People (Coursera) Coursera
University of Copenhagen,Copenhagen Business School

Business Models for Innovative Care for Older People (Coursera)

This course will introduce you to healthcare innovation within the field of healthy living and active aging. By following two specific cases on diabetes and rehabilitation, this interdisciplinary course will provide you with key theories, tools and concepts for analyzing and developing viable innovative solutions for aging populations. The lectures will cover demographic, biological, economic, social and cultural aspects of active aging and healthy living, along with lectures on current innovation theories and methods.

Jun 22nd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Design Thinking for Innovation (Coursera) Coursera
University of Virginia

Design Thinking for Innovation (Coursera)

Today innovation is everyone's business. Whether you are a manager in a global corporation, an entrepreneur starting up, in a government role, or a teacher in an elementary school, everyone is expected to get lean – to do better with less. And that is why we all need design thinking. At every level in every kind of organization, design thinking provides the tools you need to become an innovative thinker and uncover creative opportunities that are there – you're just not seeing them yet.

Jun 22nd 2026
5-12 Weeks
The Impact of Technology (Coursera) Coursera
EIT Digital

The Impact of Technology (Coursera)

In this course you will learn how to use theories and methods to make predictions of the potential impact of new technology – in general, as well as for a specific application. This will prepare you for the changes that we are facing in society, and also help you take advantage of transformations which are driven by technology. The course takes a broad approach, including social and economic factors. You will study historical examples and learn to recognize recurring patterns and cycles. The curriculum includes general innovation theories, foresight methodology, value chain disruption and strategy.

Jun 22nd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Applying Investment Decision Rules for Startups (Coursera) Coursera
Yonsei University

Applying Investment Decision Rules for Startups (Coursera)

In the previous course, you learned financial statement analysis and how to make estimate of future financial status. In this course, you are going to learn capital budgeting. That is, how to make an investment decision. You would like to select the best project among various projects you can take. Then, you need to know the criteria. In this course, you are going to learn investment decision criteria such as NPV and IRR, which are most popular decision rules.

Jun 22nd 2026
4 Weeks