A science has laws and rules. But art has no laws or rules. In fact, art is about breaking the rules, to create wonderful new works. Innovation is an art, not a science; it is about breaking the rules intelligently, to create value through novel, useful ideas. The best way to learn the art of innovation, or indeed to learn any art, is from those who have mastered it at the highest level and are willing and able to share their wisdom. In this course, a master innovator, Dadi Perlmutter, shares with Coursera learners what he has learned during 34 years of world-changing innovation at Intel Corp., where he served until recently as Executive Vice President. Perlmutter summarizes over three decades of innovation in ten key lessons, recounted in conversation with Prof. Shlomo Maital. Our hope is that these ten lessons will significantly improve your chances of success as an entrepreneur. At the end of this module you will be able to analyze situations of failure and success, and to draw conclusions for future situations.

Many highly creative people never get beyond vaguely talking about their ideas. Don’t be like them, Perlmutter counsels. Take action to implement at least some of your ideas. The bigger your idea, the more resistance you will likely encounter. Perlmutter explains how he overcame such resistance, in order to help you do the same. At the end of this module you will be able to define key features of your product or service in order to differentiate it. You will also be able to focus on key ideas in order to fight resistance.

Innovators and their innovations rarely stand alone. Most innovations are part of large complex ecosystems. Perlmutter counsels you to design your ecosystem to enhance your innovation and offers examples of how he himself did this with the Centrino chipset. He then discusses how innovators can build powerful, effective teams. At the end of this module you will be able to design an ecosystem and build a powerful and effective team. You will also be able to simplify a complex product or service.

We began by observing that innovation is about breaking the rules. Nonetheless, experience shows that there are some basic lessons that can be learned from long years of experience, lessons that can help young startup entrepreneurs improve their chances of ultimate success. We hope and trust that Coursera learners have integrated these ten lessons, adapted and expanded them to fit their needs and personalities, and will make them part of their personal toolbox as they set out to use their creativity to change the world. The capstone project, the fourth of four courses in this specialization, will help them learn how to do this.