MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship

When taking this course, you will raise your own self-awareness and gain self-confidence for a better leadership. You will discover a new approach to leadership based on trust and sense. The “Savoir-Relier” leadership, a new approach of leadership, taught to HEC MBA’s student and top executives, enables better team leadership and encourages relationships between people in spite of their differences of opinion. You will develop relational skills, self-knowledge and self-awareness on the way to unfold your own leadership style. You’ll learn the skills of The Savoir-Relier (SR) methodology for better connecting with yourself or others by going through the following 4 steps for successful leadership: Introspection, Conversation, Resilience and Responsibility toward Value Creation. In this first MOOC of the "Inspirational Leadership" specialization, you will practice the first two steps of the method for successful leadership: Introspection and Conversation. You will get to know yourself better during the Introspection part and get a chance to improve your communication skills in order to better interact with others. You will meet people like you who will share their stories and their experience with Savoir-Relier and why it is so inspiring for them in their life. Together, you’ll develop greater self-awareness by developing a leadership self-portrait and going through fun activities to increase your empathy and communication. Leaders from different organizations and participants of the HEC Paris Leadership Certificate, the program from which this course and specialization are inspired, will share with you their insights about what it takes to become a great leader and what they are able to achieve now that they apply The Savoir-Relier methodology. This course is part of the specialization “Inspirational Leadership: Leading with Sense”. In the next courses, you'll go through the second two steps of leadership: Resilience and Responsibility toward Value Creation.

This course covers in the chronological order each defining step of an entrepreneurial project. It begins with very personal considerations related to getting to better know yourself better so as to decide if you are ready for the multiple challenges of entrepreneurship. It then deals with creativity in order to provide the right set of tools to find an idea with the right potential to disrupt an existing business. We then discuss how to gather a founding team, how to raise money to initiate the project, and how to deal with day to day cash management. Later in the course, we discuss the art of selling, focusing on business to business sales, and how to measure the product launch phase using cohort analysis. Later on, we discuss the challenges of HR in an entrepreneurial environment, and of recruiting at a point where nobody knows your company. We then describe very practical techniques to initiate the international development of a small company. Last, we cover the exit strategy topic.

This course is aimed at everyone with an interest in entrepreneurship and innovation. This includes graduate and undergraduate students, current, past, and future entrepreneurs, managers of innovative firms, or managers in charge of leading innovation in their company. There is no formal prerequisite for this course.

Throughout the course you’ll be exposed to an in-depth analysis of four applied case studies of successful ventures, as well as both theoretical and applied frameworks that will help you to better design and manage your organization. To begin, we recommend you take a few minutes to explore our website. Click on Course Content on the left to see what material we’ll cover in each of the four modules. You can also preview the assignments you’ll need to complete to pass the course. Click Discussions to see the forums where you can discuss the course material with fellow students taking the class. Be sure to introduce yourself to everyone in the Meet and Greet forum!

This course should take you about 4 weeks to complete. By the time you finish it, you’ll have learned to:

•Evaluate the value-creating potential of your business idea and design the business model that is best suited to capture this value
• Manage talent and creativity by structuring the right incentives for existing employees as well as design strategies to retain and attract the very best talent
• Design formal organization structures that fit with the strategy of your business and the culture of your organization
• Understand and manage norms guiding behavior in organizations
• Recognize and manage bottlenecks hampering organizational growth

We really hope that you’ll enjoy the learning journey ahead. Good luck as you get started and we look forward to seeing you in class!

Profs. Giada Di Stefano and Tomasz Obloj and HEC Paris Digital Learning

This course is part of the HEC Paris MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. If you are admitted to the online Master, your coursework will count towards your degree program.

The HEC Organizational Design and Management Specialization will close for enrollment on August 11, 2020. If you are interested in earning a Specialization Certificate, please upgrade or apply for Financial Aid in each course of the specialization by August 11, 2020, if you have not already done so. After August 11, 2020, learners will no longer have access to courses they have not paid for.

In order to earn a Specialization Certificate, you will need to complete all graded assignments, including peer reviews, by February 8, 2021. After that point, no new assignment submissions will be accepted for Certificate credit.

If you are enrolled in the degree or certificate version of this course, you will not be affected and can continue your studies beyond August 11, 2020.



This course is aimed at everyone with an interest in entrepreneurship and innovation. This includes graduate and undergraduate students, current, past, and future entrepreneurs, managers of innovative firms, or managers in charge of leading innovation in their company. There is no formal prerequisite for this course.

Throughout the course you’ll be exposed to an in-depth analysis of four applied case studies of successful ventures, as well as both theoretical and applied frameworks that will help you to better design and manage your organization. To begin, we recommend you take a few minutes to explore our website. Click on Course Content on the left to see what material we’ll cover in each of the four modules. You can also preview the assignments you’ll need to complete to pass the course. Click Discussions to see the forums where you can discuss the course material with fellow students taking the class. Be sure to introduce yourself to everyone in the Meet and Greet forum!

This course should take you about 4 weeks to complete. By the time you finish it, you’ll have learned to:

•Evaluate the value-creating potential of your business idea and design the business model that is best suited to capture this value
• Manage talent and creativity by structuring the right incentives for existing employees as well as design strategies to retain and attract the very best talent
• Design formal organization structures that fit with the strategy of your business and the culture of your organization
• Understand and manage norms guiding behavior in organizations
• Recognize and manage bottlenecks hampering organizational growth

We really hope that you’ll enjoy the learning journey ahead. Good luck as you get started and we look forward to seeing you in class!

Profs. Giada Di Stefano and Tomasz Obloj and HEC Paris Digital Learning

This course is part of the HEC Paris MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. If you are admitted to the full program, your coursework will count towards your degree program.

The HEC Strategic Management of Innovation Specialization will close for enrollment on August 11, 2020. If you are interested in earning a Specialization Certificate, please upgrade or apply for Financial Aid in each course of the specialization by August 11, 2020, if you have not already done so. After August 11, 2020, learners will no longer have access to courses they have not paid for.

In order to earn a Specialization Certificate, you will need to complete all graded assignments, including peer reviews, by February 8, 2021. After that point, no new assignment submissions will be accepted for Certificate credit.

If you are enrolled in the degree or certificate version of this course, you will not be affected and can continue your studies beyond August 11, 2020.



This course will prepare you for making strategic decisions specifically about innovation. It will give you an understanding of why firms innovate, why and how they compete on innovation, and what role innovation plays in shaping the strategic decisions of companies. You will learn how to source innovation, the types and patterns of innovation, how to compete in dynamic standards battles and how to gain dominance, how to protect innovation from imitation, and the crucial question of timing - a new product launch and market entry.

This course is part of the HEC Paris MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. If you are admitted to the full program, your coursework will count towards your degree program.

The HEC Boosting Creativity Specialization will close for enrollment on August 11, 2020. If you are interested in earning a Specialization Certificate, please upgrade or apply for Financial Aid in each course of the specialization by August 11, 2020, if you have not already done so. After August 11, 2020, learners will no longer have access to courses they have not paid for.

In order to earn a Specialization Certificate, you will need to complete all graded assignments, including peer reviews, by February 8, 2021. After that point, no new assignment submissions will be accepted for Certificate credit.

If you are enrolled in the degree or certificate version of this course, you will not be affected and can continue your studies beyond August 11, 2020.


Successful contemporary business relies on the ability of all its employees to be creative. Creativity can be developed and refined, albeit with effort and practice. The first goal of this course is to provide a variety of experiences and activities with the aim of developing the creative abilities of each participant. A second goal is to understand the importance of creativity from a consumer perspective. Consumers are being offered more and more opportunities to customize their products and services, and are increasingly seeking to express their creativity through their purchasing choices. As entrepreneurs, we have the ability to shape the consumer environment in ways that help consumers enhance their own creative abilities, and develop a unique relationship with them as a result.

This course is aimed at anyone who wants to understand what we actually know (as opposed to what we think we know) about human creativity, and how to use this knowledge to think differently and productively about business challenges. As the focus is on creativity as a cognitive function, it does not matter what your background is, what industry you come from or want to enter.

After completing this course, past students report having acquired a set of strategies that enable them to tackle business problems with a fresh perspective.

This course is part of the HEC Paris MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. If you are admitted to the full program, your coursework will count towards your degree program