Identify a problem, develop a solution, and bootstrap your entrepreneurial venture.

About this course

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.

What you’ll learn

• 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.

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