Microcredentials

Explore the importance of innovation for a firm’s competitive success and the advancement of society in general. This program will introduce some of the risks and costs of innovation and look at why firms are much more likely to be successful if they have a well-crafted strategy for innovation. Specifically, this program focuses on likely sources of innovation, how innovations are frequently categorized and why some innovations are more successful than others.

Registration coming soon.

Explore the methods and tools organizational leaders use to formulate an innovation strategy. Developing an innovation strategy begins with understanding an organization’s strategic direction and intent and how innovation can help the organization reach its goals. Explore ways in which firms evaluate new initiatives and how to decide if the innovation should be pursued, while considering factors like collaboration with others and intellectual property protection.

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Examine the various factors organization leaders consider when implementing their innovation strategy. Items such as organization’s size and structure as well as team size, composition, structure, leadership and administration all impact the success of an innovation launch. You will also explore the best practices for improving both the effectiveness and efficiency of the new product development process and how the deployment strategy is impacted by effective timing, licensing, pricing, distribution and marketing strategies.

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Explore the importance of innovation for a firm’s competitive success and the advancement of society in general. This program will introduce some of the risks and costs of innovation and look at why firms are much more likely to be successful if they have a well-crafted strategy for innovation. Specifically, this program focuses on likely sources of innovation, how innovations are frequently categorized and why some innovations are more successful than others.

Registration coming soon.

Examine a variety of topics and concepts aimed at evaluating the profitability of a business from an operating perspective. The most common analysis metric used in business today is return on equity (ROE). While ROE is a powerful metric, it includes income and losses from both operating and nonoperating activities when, in fact, companies create value mainly through the core operations of the business.

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Building on concepts from Operating Return Approach I, this microcredential focuses on modeling the value drivers of a business so that managers and business owners can obtain the market value of their business.

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This microcredential delves into the realm of cloud-based systems, shedding light on the transformative impact these technologies have on organizational computing infrastructure.

This comprehensive overview equips students with a clear understanding of cloud computing, exploring its various aspects and implications for businesses. The course provides valuable insights into critical considerations such as service level agreements, elasticity, security, audits and practical implementation issues. Furthermore, the course encompasses vital topics like automation, infrastructure as code, DevOps, orchestration and edge computing.

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Tableau is a widely used software environment that provides business analysts with tools for sharing actionable insights with decision makers. Tableau enables analysts to acquire, filter, and transform data into a variety of high-level visualizations used for business intelligence. Tableau insights often are structured into interactive dashboards permitting further data exploration and communication.

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Become a data-savvy professional. Develop the most fundamental skills in data analytics including data collection from websites and databases, data wrangling and extract-transform-load (ETL), visualization, and business intelligence.

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This microcredential is designed to help you develop data analytical skills that can be utilized in all areas of accounting, from large organizations to running your own business.

Accounting professionals who can interpret financial data and tell a compelling story with numbers are in high demand. Learn the skills needed to transform data into actionable insights that can drive strategic decisions, optimize processes and make informed financial recommendations.

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Through this microcredential, you will study and develop skills in management analytics and research methods, while exploring how those intersect with AI. Practice and learn methodologies for formulating business problems, determining appropriate data collection methods and preparing data for analysis.

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This course will provide business owners and future business owners with the tools necessary to make informed business decisions.

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Alexandria Serra
Lawyer and Entrepreneur
PMBA Student

Entrepreneurship is my life! I was unsure that a PMBA was for me … until I took Dr. Jackson’s Strategic Innovation Course. Throughout the course, I learned skills that were directly applicable to my business in real-time. The final project, a strategic analysis of my business and industry, propelled me not only to cultivate an innovative way to shake up the pet industry, but gave me the confidence to pitch the idea to Mass Challenge Texas, a zero-equity startup accelerator program. From the moment I started the badge course, I was hooked. I knew I had to get my graduate degree. K-State PMBA courses are like rocket fuel for my career!

Shawn Drew
Market President & CEO
Commerce Bank, Manhattan, KS

"While many of the topics were things I was aware of from being in the business world, I found the information great for the foundational/introductory badge. The piece I enjoyed most was the paper at the end. While I am not a fan of writing papers, I appreciated the challenge. We were asked to pick a company we knew a lot about and talk about strategic innovation in the company. I chose Commerce of course, but as I dug into our history, I learned a lot about strategic innovation inside Commerce I was never aware of.

I appreciated the fact that it was self-paced, I worked on it mostly from home during an evening. I probably spent a total of 8-10 hours on the program, most on the final paper. The course was a wonderful refresher of information and that innovation comes in many forms."

Kensley Fleischer, MBA
Marketing Specialist
Shamrock Trading Corporation

"As a graduate student who was preparing to enter a career in marketing, I knew it was vital to learn the basics of data analytics to understand the implications of different campaigns and their effectiveness, especially when justifying those with a higher cost by looking at return on investment. I took this course because I wanted to deepen my analytical skills and learn more about visualizing and interpreting data from a business standpoint. Plus, as digital marketing continues to evolve and become more data-driven, I knew that employers were looking for these types of skills in potential hires, and I wanted to stand out as an applicant. While the badge course was only six weeks long, it challenged me to learn another tool outside of Excel that I could use for more complex data. Now that I am working full-time as a marketing specialist, a big aspect of my job is analyzing data from social media, email marketing, push notifications, and other digital marketing campaigns to help shape future decisions for our brand. I think establishing data analytical skills is vital for any business major to be successful in their future career."

Dan Bergen
Director of Data Analytics
Centralized Supply Chain Services

"In February 2022, as part of our creation of a microcredentialing program, Chad Jackson facilitated the Strategic Innovation course for our organization,” said Dan Bergen, Director of Data Analytics at Centralized Supply Chain Services (CSCS). “Chad did a fantastic job presenting the material and challenging each one of the participants to think critically about what is important, where we should focus our time, and why it’s essential to learn new, practical tools. As result of this training, CSCS created a cross functional Innovation Task Force this spring whose recommendations were just presented to our leadership team to be incorporated into the strategic vision for coming years. The true definition of success in a course is not just the transfer of knowledge but the application of said knowledge and I am confident that without the Strategic Innovation badge program, CSCS would not have the dedicated focus and processes around innovation that we do today.”