Business & Shipping Courses

Applied Leadership

Leadership is an essential component of business success, involving a complex interaction between the leader, followers and situation. It describes a process in which a person influences, motivates and enables others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of organizations of which they are members.

At this state-of-the-art Applied Leadership course, we watch an exciting movie and become familiar with essential leadership „KPIs“ as well as with the importance of value systems and their creation. What distinguishes a successful leader and diverse personal, behavioural and communicational aspects come into discussion as well as the importance of sharp strategic and organizational skills and how these can advance to excellence.

Exercising Leadership: Foundational Principles + HARVARD certification

The crises of our time generate enormous adaptive challenges for our families, organizations, communities, and societies. The need for leadership that can mobilize people to meet these challenges and improve life is critical.

In this introductory course, you will explore strategies for leading in a changing world where adaptive pressures will continue to challenge all of us. You will discover new ways to approach complex organizational systems and take thoughtful action on the work we all face ahead. Most importantly, you will reflect on how to move forward on the leadership challenges you care about most.

In this short introductory course, you will discover a diagnostic-and-action process for exercising leadership that explores the following foundational principles and strategies:

How to identify and unbundle complex challenges
How to understand the role of formal and informal authority
How to identify the key perspectives of stakeholders
How to build and renew trust relationships
How to approach conflict
How to implement personal strategies for surviving and thriving amidst change

You Can Innovate: User Innovation & Entrepreneurship + MIT certification

We’ll let you in on a secret. Innovation happens everywhere. More often than not, it is about ordinary people solving real problems. Imagine, this could be you.

This course will teach you to look at the world through the lens of problem discovery and problem solving. You will explore problems that you see in your life and in the world and evaluate their potential for entrepreneurial innovation. You will iterate toward solutions that are just right. As you do that, you will become a user innovator.

Examples of user innovation and its entrepreneurial potential are infinite. A surfer created the GoPro to take “selfies” while surfing. A student came up with Dropbox after losing the flash drive. Two entrepreneurs created a tool for themselves to track software bugs, giving rise to Atlassian.

Taught by Eric von Hippel, the founding scholar of user innovation, and Erdin Beshimov, the founder of MIT Bootcamps, this course will guide you through a step-by-step process for ideating a user innovation and shaping its entrepreneurial possibilities. Importantly, through immersive case studies, this course will introduce you to effective strategies of entrepreneurial bootstrapping, so that you can succeed even when you do not have many resources.

We invite to the course, anyone with dreams of making a positive impact on society. The course should be timely and specifically beneficial for:

Aspiring entrepreneurs searching for startup ideas;
Inveterate inventors looking to expand the impact of their innovations on society;
Committed entrepreneurs seeking effective strategies for advancing their entrepreneurial missions, especially under constraints of resource scarcity.

You can innovate!

You Can Innovate is a course from MIT Bootcamps and as such prepares you for participation in the program.

The Bootcamp is a highly selective, intensive, global MIT training program for innovators. You will learn from MIT faculty and you will be intensively coached by experienced MIT-trained entrepreneurs. In the process, you will be challenged to generate an impactful entrepreneurial innovation in one week. Learn about and apply to one of the upcoming bootcamps at

We’ll let you in on a secret. Innovation happens everywhere. More often than not, it is about ordinary people solving real problems. Imagine, this could be you.

We invite to the course, anyone with dreams of making a positive impact on society. The course should be timely and specifically beneficial for:

Aspiring entrepreneurs searching for startup ideas;
Inveterate inventors looking to expand the impact of their innovations on society;
Committed entrepreneurs seeking effective strategies for advancing their entrepreneurial missions, especially under constraints of resource scarcity.

You can innovate!

You Can Innovate is a course from MIT Bootcamps and as such prepares you for participation in the program.

Understand fundamental user innovation concepts such as lead user, sticky information, peer-to-peer diffusion, diffusion via the market, and low-cost innovation niche;
Apply the concept of lead user to identifying numerous opportunities for entrepreneurial innovation;
Learn the concept of “solution/need co-forming” and apply it to conceiving a viable and feasible solution to the problem that you seek to solve;
Learn the tools and strategies of entrepreneurial bootstrapping, and apply them to designing the strategy for diffusing your user innovation;
Explore the trends and forces driving the democratization of innovation and apply the insights to uplifting the potential of your entrepreneurial contribution to society.

Unfortunately, learners residing in one or more of the following countries or regions will not be able to register for this course: Iran, Cuba and the Crimea region of Ukraine. While edX has sought licenses from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to offer our courses to learners in these countries and regions, the licenses we have received are not broad enough to allow us to offer this course in all locations. edX truly regrets that U.S. sanctions prevent us from offering all of our courses to everyone, no matter where they live.

Fundamentals of Digital Marketing + University of Maryland certification

In this business and management certificate course focused on the foundations of digital marketing, you will gain an understanding of how the digital economy works and develop the critical insights necessary to succeed in e-commerce and digital and social media marketing.

The fixed and mobile Internet and related technologies exert a profound influence on how business and social institutions evolve, how they are challenged—and sometimes, even displaced. Companies that were non-existent a few short years ago, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Uber, have dramatically changed how we interact, communicate and navigate our world. Even Amazon and Google are relatively “young” by any measure. If you’re an entrepreneur, investor, manager, or student, you need thoughtful approaches to navigate and win in this new, evolving environment.

This online course is organized around four broad themes and leverages relevant theory and analysis, as well as numerous practical examples to develop key learning points and accelerate your knowledge of digital marketing.

The themes are:

● Behavioral foundations for understanding and navigating the new online-offline landscape

● New forms of interaction, including formation of networks and reputation building

● Tools and principles of digital marketing action including online advertising on fixed and mobile devices

● New media platforms and emergence of various marketing channels and mixed marketing models

This course is beneficial to marketing professionals, analysts, entrepreneurs, small business owners, investors, and consumers.

This course is part of Maryland Smith’s Digital Marketing Professional Certificate.

Creative Thinking: Techniques and Tools for Success + Imperial College London certification

In today’s ever-growing and changing world, being able to think creatively and innovatively are essential skills. It can sometimes be challenging to step back and reflect in an environment which is fast paced or when you are required to assimilate large amounts of information. Making sense of or communicating new ideas in an innovative and engaging way, approaching problems from fresh angles, and producing novel solutions are all traits which are highly sought after by employers.

The greatest innovators aren’t necessarily the people who have the most original idea. Often, they are people- or teams- that have harnessed their creativity to develop a new perspective or more effective way of communicating an idea. You can train your imagination to seize opportunities, break away from routine and habit, and tap into your natural creativity.

This course will equip you with a ‘tool-box’, introducing you to a selection of behaviours and techniques that will augment your innate creativity. Some of the tools are suited to use on your own and others work well for a group, enabling you to leverage the power of several minds.

The practical approach of this course enables you to acquire an essential skill-set for generating ideas, with plenty of:

Fun e-tivities and exercises;

Practical lectures and tips;

Video representations of the techniques in action.

You can pick and choose which of these tools or techniques suit your needs and interests, focusing on some or all of the selected approaches and in the order that fits best for you.

Whatever you’re doing, whether it’s work or leisure, if you practice spending time applying these tools to anything you see or imagine, they will help you get into the habit of making space for observation and imagination. No previous knowledge is needed.

Join this course and our community of practioners in CREATIVITY!

We look forward to seeing you online!

Understand what creative thinking techniques are
Comprehend their importance in tackling global challenges as well as in everyday problem-solving scenarios
Apply different brainstorming techniques in group activities
Be proficient in the application of the 6 thinking hats tool in different life scenarios
Develop a systematic approach to idea generation through the use of morphological analysis
Innovate on an existing product, service or situation applying the SCAMPER method
Get confident with the theory of inventive problem solving, called TRIZ
Select and apply the appropriate technique based on the opportunity to seize or the problem to tackle

Module 1
In the first module we focus on the basic principles of creativity and highlight its importance in tackling global challenges. Creativity is explored and applied at two different levels, lower and higher-level creativity.
Throughout, we’re aiming to provoke your thoughts and develop your creative mind through varied activities and interactions.Module 2
In this module, we will look at how we can augment our creativity using different methods of Brainstorming, a creativity approach that aids the generation of ideas in solving a stated problem. We particularly focus on the application of brainstorming tools in group activities, with the aim of enabling you to understand, evaluate and apply different types of brainstorming techniques in your own context.

Module 3
We will focus on the principles as well as application of the 6 Hats thinking tool both at an individual level and in a group, under various professional and personal situations, allowing you to develop competency and accelerate proficiency on the use of technique.

Module 4
You will become familiar with the Principles of Morphological Analysis and learn how to apply it in various life scenarios, from design to developing movie plot-lines, whilst developing a more systematic approach to idea generation.

Module 5
In Module 5, we continue to enhance your fluency, flexibility and originality of idea generation by introducing you to another creativity tool called the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ). We will particularly focus on application of TRIZ and the TRIZ Contradiction Matrix and how it can be used in problem, both at an individual and in group level.

Module 6
This module we will introduce you to the final creativity tool in the course and its importance in generation of ideas and improvement of the existing ones; SCAMPER. You will become familiar with the concepts of SCAMPER and gain proficiency in its application in various unusual, personal or professional situations, whilst inspiring related ideas.

Module 7
Now that you have mastered a wide range of creativity tools and developed competency in their application over a wide range of situations and domains, we will wrap up by asking you to use these tool in combinations and apply these in context and scenarios that are also related to your own discipline or context. This will help you reinforce the concepts that you have learnt so far and enable you to use the creativity tools freely in problem solving and idea generation.