Andrea Ippolito is a Lecturer in the Engineering Management Program at Cornell University as well as the founder and Director of Women Entrepreneurs Cornell (W.E. Cornell). Additionally, Andrea is currently the CEO and Founder of SimpliFed, a company supporting every family on the baby feeding journey. Prior to joining Cornell, she served as the Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs Innovators Network within the VA Center for Innovation. Ms. Ippolito completed her M.S. in Engineering and Management at MIT. Prior to MIT, she worked as a research scientist within the Corporate Technology Development group at Boston Scientific. Ms. Ippolito obtained both her B.S. in Biological Engineering in 2006 and Master’s of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering in 2007 from Cornell University.
Building Innovation CompetenciesCornell Course
Course Overview
To create and sustain a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in your organization, it is helpful to establish an environment that supports certain mindsets. And these mindsets can create first a culture change in your organization, often followed by a higher financial return on investment. These mindsets are the competencies that convert ideas to impact.
In this course, you will learn about and apply three key innovation competencies: lean startup, maker culture, and design thinking. Each of these competencies are used by large and small organizations, resulting in new products and services and satisfied employees and customers.
Lean thinking is a form of customer discovery where you will develop a series of hypotheses and then test them. Maker culture is based on the do-it-yourself ethos and can help you prototype and test products quickly, reducing time to market. Design thinking is a process of empathetically listening to and then co-designing with your customers. While the three competencies have some overlapping methodology, one or two of them will best support your innovation strategy and tie in more effectively with your organization's overall strategy.
The following course is required to be completed before taking this course:
- Developing Innovation Strategy
Key Course Takeaways
- Use lean startup for hypothesis-driven customer discovery
- Build a maker culture for quick prototyping
- Apply design thinking to co-design with your customers
- Assess your organization's cultural readiness for innovation

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Not ready to enroll but want to learn more? Download the course brochure to review program details.How It Works
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Who Should Enroll
- Entry-level to executive leaders
- Product managers
- MBA students
- Data scientists and analysts
- Entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs
- Engineers