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Individual Course

Open Innovation

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Course Length

6 weeks

2–4 hours a week

Featuring faculty from:

Harvard Business School

Certificate Price:

$ 950

Apply by Aug 18, 2025

Apply Now

Certificate Price:

$ 950

Apply by Aug 18, 2025

Apply Now

In Open Innovation, you will learn strategies for finding the best ideas, solutions, and people necessary to solve your organization’s most difficult problems.

What do you do when your organization can’t solve a problem on its own? Are you paying for effort instead of solutions? Is your organization stuck?

Strategic problem solving is a key element in innovation and vital to an organization’s success and growth. Open innovation is a strategy for innovation management that suggests the best ideas and people necessary to solve your organization’s difficult problems may come from outside your company entirely. Through open innovation, organizations can connect with talented people and breakthrough ideas from across the globe. Whether you’re developing a new product, responding to the changing workforce, or simply looking for new ideas, you can use open innovation to find answers and solutions in areas you didn’t expect.

Instructor-Paced

HBS Online

Industries:

  • Technology
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Manufacturing
  • Consulting
  • Prof. Dr. Rafaela K.
  • Ed W.
  • Thelma T.

Global Learning Community

  • Learn from real case studies
  • Do it on your own time
  • Get a certificate, add it to your resume
  • Be part of the Harvard Community
Data Science for Business values

Syllabus

Learning Requirements: There are no required prerequisites to enroll in this course. To earn a Certificate of Completion from Harvard Online, participants must thoughtfully complete modules 1-6 by stated deadlines.

Download Full Syllabus

Faculty

Industry Experts

Your Instructor

Karim R. Lakhani

Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School

Karim R. Lakhani is a Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and one of the Principal Investigators of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH). He specializes in the management of technological innovation in firms and communities. His research is on distributed innovation systems and the movement of innovative activity to the edges of organizations and into communities. He has extensively studied the emergence of open source software communities and their unique innovation and product development strategies.

Industry Expert

Jin Paik

Jin Paik is the Senior Director, Lab Operations at the Digital, Data, & Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard. Hear from this expert researcher how open innovation can illuminate novel solutions for your organization.

Industry Expert

Luis Villa

Luis Villa is the Co-Founder and General Counsel of Tidelift, a startup that aims to make open source better for everyone by supporting developers. He will share how open innovation can attract talented employees to your organization.

Affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.

Industry Expert

Lynn E. Buquo

Lynn Buquo is the Former Senior Advisor at the NASA Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation. She will share how NASA is adopting open innovation into their organization.

Affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.

This course was worth my time and I thoroughly enjoyed communicating and learning with innovative thinkers from around the world. This was a great experience, and I am grateful my administration invested in me in this way to continue learning and growing so I could better do my job and help more humans.
Lindsey K.
Associate Dean for Research, Outreach, and Innovation in the College of Education. Director of the Science and Technology Education Center (SciTEC)
Since I have already studied Open Innovation for my PhD, I am impressed by all the new knowledge and insights that I have gained. I like the different perspectives and the great case studies, which have been very supportive in many ways.
Prof. Dr. Rafaela K.
Professor of International Management, Technology and Innovation
This course provides enough details, tips, and real-world examples to utilize open innovation as a strategy within any organization. It helped explain the different tools, platforms, tactics, and flexibilities to use depending on the business outcomes required.
Ed W.
Director of Possibilities
The content, cases, and examples helped me understand how this topic is applies in real life, and definitely added lots of value to my professional interest. I am likely to leverage this knowledge in my career.
Thelma T.
Marketing Consultant

Take two extra eligible courses for and receive a Harvard on Digital Certificate of Specialization

These courses are curated to help you develop a data-first mindset, improve your digital strategic thinking, and learn how to navigate, manage, and lead in these environments. 

Learn more
  • Choose 3 eligible courses
  • Complete your courses within 18 months
  • Earn Your Certificate

Digital Health

3–4 hours per week • Starting Nov 19, 2025

Digital Health

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Past Participant Discounts

Learners who have enrolled in at least one qualifying Harvard Online program can receive a 30% discount, automatically applied to the Program Fee upon time of payment.

Learners who have earned a verified certificate for a HarvardX course hosted on the edX platform are eligible to receive a 30% discount using a discount code. Please check your email for a code or contact us.

Nonprofit, Government, Military, and Education Discounts

Eligibility is determined by a prospective learner’s email address, ending in .org, .gov, .mil, or .edu. Interested learners can apply below for the discount and, if eligible, will receive a promo code to enter when completing payment information to enroll in a Harvard Online program.

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