Professional Certificate in Innovation Practice

You will attend an extra two classroom sessions (six hours total) at the start of the semester. These sessions cover several topics, consolidating the skills you learned during the leadership intensive, and exploring the devices leaders can use to manage their authority in a team. Run in a very intimate environment, these two sessions will help you to develop technical competence and confidence in key leadership techniques.

All of the IPP mentors are invited to write a reflection each week and to receive feedback from a peer. For you, this is assessed. We find that the consistency and rigour associated with regular assessments, along with detailed feedback, leads to more rapid learning, rapid consolidation of learning, and more effective translation of learning into skills and identity.

You will write two essays about your leadership journey.

• The first essay is designed to help you integrate the applied material you have been learning in the program with the theoretical literature
• The second essay gives you an opportunity to review your leadership journey through the semester, take stock, and map your developmental next steps.

You will also write three essays about your innovation journey. Because, as a mentor, you do not actually “do” the innovation project, these are designed to:

• Ensure that you could lead a human-centred innovation project in the workplace
• Help you integrate your leadership training with your innovation training.

The questions you are asked to address will be tailored to your particular work situation, to ensure you get maximum value out of the experience. The intention is that you will broadly address the following topics:

• An evaluation of the innovation capacity of an organisation (normally your employer, though it could be a client organisation if your project doesn’t require innovation in their organisation)
• A critical evaluation of alternative insight generation and ideation processes and where they are best applied. A likely version of this question will ask you which techniques you would ask your team to revisit, and why
• An implementation plan for an innovation project, such as the one you are mentoring.