Introduction
This is a pathway overview and playbook for Innovation Principles Technology Leadership and Innovation Management: TLIM-3330 course. The intent is to provide insight into the theory and methodology for learning and applying innovation as cognitive skills of thinking. The course is the gateway class for The University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering’s Technology Leadership and Innovation Management (TLIM) multi-course Applied Innovation curricula. The program is designed to train real world competencies derived from proven methods and processes for engineering ingenuity (1), creating innovations, and leading disruptive change. The Innovation Principles class offers the opportunity to earn an industry recognized Cullen College of Engineering enhanced Innovation Engineering™ (2) Blue Belt certificate that includes a secure online portal of resources, Artificial Intelligence coaching, and an extensive portfolio of tools and processes.
The world, markets, people, and students are undergoing dynamic changes driven by a waterfall of technology solutions. According to McKinsey, (3) 84% of CEOs believe innovation is critical to growth. There are reasons why companies put a lot of emphasis on it. Innovation allows organizations to stay relevant in a competitive market and is important for economic growth. The ability to detect and resolve problems and capitalize on potential depends on understanding and applying thinking as an elite scalable competency.
The Innovation Principles course (and the following advanced courses) is a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) curriculum designed to change a student’s life, train their mind to think competently, obstruct cognitive offloading from AI, and provide students with reasoning tools. These resources help manage and design the avalanche of data and solutions that are confronting the knowledge-based, technology-dependent, global economy over the next 20 years. The disciplines of thinking taught in the course are lateral thinking, logic modeling, systems thinking, critical thinking, and reasoning to discover, create, communicate, and design opportunities while accessing and leading resources through disruption.
TLIM-3330 Innovation Principles – 3 Course Modules
The foundation of the applied innovation principles course complements professional industry accepted competencies blended with professional legacies of inventing and launching new global markets and products. The program’s disciplines encompass three course modules:
Course Module 1: Engineering Ingenuity: The art of stimulating the brain to create solutions.
Course Module 2: Development: Building an idea into an innovation concept.
Course Module 3: Production: Engineering a concept for commercialization.
Students learn by doing… not from rote memory. The course engages students with in-class lectures and brain stimulating workshops complemented with structured online assignments and lecture videos. All assignments are pass/fail in designated skill categories. All assignments are coached by a certified instructor to guide students to master the exercises. Students can turn in the exercises as many times as it takes to pass the assignments before the respected due dates.
Professional Blue Belt Certification
All lectures are real-world examples that align with online exercises to craft relevant solutions. Instructors transcend teaching to mentoring and coaching throughout every assignment and class. All assignments use templates that sequentially guide students through the stages of deductive reasoning and experiential learning to master the exercises and encode the knowledge into sustainable memory recall. Those students who master 90% of the applied innovation skill exercises receive a professional University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering industry-accepted Innovation Engineering™ Blue Belt certificate. This includes free access to a portal of applications, AI coaching, and research capabilities as students’ personal career jump starter tool kit.
