New Online Course on Financing Innovation: Valuing Projects and Firms

Just having great ideas is not enough to start a company. Big ideas need funding to bring them to life. Stanford University’s new online course, Financing Innovation: Valuing Projects and Firms, will teach participants to build sound financial models for their projects and understand where potential issues can arise. “This course is designed to make you think like an investor and use this knowledge to drive your business,” said Stanford Graduate School of Business finance professor Peter DeMarzo, who teaches the class that became available September 27. “It will describe common finance mistakes and how you can avoid them.”

Available to anyone anywhere in the world at any time, the online course, Financing Innovation: Valuing Projects and Firms, is the eighth in a series of classes offered as part of the Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship Online Certificate Program, which launched in September 2012. The addition of this course now makes it possible to complete the program certificate. Participants may enroll in just a single course or earn the professional certificate from Stanford by completing any 8 of 12 courses.

Financing Innovation will help participants identify the sources of earnings, cash flows, and shareholder value, as well as develop a financial model to assess the value proposition of a particular product, investment, or new venture. Topics will include cash flow analysis and the staging of investment, among others. Applicants may apply and register online for the Financing Innovation course.

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Other available online courses include:

• The Power of Stories to Fuel Innovation
• Building Business Models
• Scaling Excellence Through Innovation
• Marketing Innovation
• Leading Innovation
• Creating Demand: Driving Growth Using Traditional, Social, and Viral Marketing
• Empathize and Prototype: A Hands-On Dive into the Key Tools of Design Thinking

Professionals around the world are able to access Stanford faculty and Silicon Valley experts as they learn essential skills and effective strategies for working in and managing innovative organizations. An engaging digital experience has been developed by the Stanford Center for Professional Development at the School of Engineering and the Graduate School of Business to deliver the course content.

Registration is open for the first eight courses. Tuition is $995 for each course. Additional courses will continue to be introduced throughout 2013, including:

• Negotiation: How to Get (More of) What You Want, Cultivating the Entrepreneurial Mindset
• Strategy for Innovation
• Innovating through Value Chains

Courses are taught by Stanford faculty, drawing on instructors from the Graduate School of Business, the School of Engineering, and the Stanford Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, known as the d.school, as well as Silicon Valley industry leaders, using highly interactive and occasionally unconventional methods. The online certificate program is led by faculty directors Robert Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at the School of Engineering, and Hayagreeva Rao, professor of organizational behavior and human resources at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs, as well as professionals from startups, Fortune 500 companies, nonprofit teams, and the public sector, will find the program to be practical and impactful. Given the level of material, participants must be fluent in written and spoken English. Participants will develop the skills to become catalysts for change as they learn how to foster innovation throughout their organizations. Whether this is someone’s first class in innovation or a chance to cultivate a deeper understanding and practice of innovation, participants will learn how to use innovative thinking for personal and professional success.

By Barbara Buell