Curriculum: The Innovator

Nine Organizational Perspectives courses form the heart of the Yale SOM integrated core curriculum. Each course approaches managerial problems from the viewpoint of a key internal or external organizational role, rather than a single academic discipline. Yale SOM students learn that finding the best solutions requires a broad view of the issues and an ability to synthesize competing points of view.

The Innovator course focuses on issues of idea generation, idea evaluation and development, creative projects, and fostering and sustaining innovation in organizations. Students are exposed both to the ways of thinking of innovators and to the promises and perils of interacting with and managing innovators.

"If you don't innovate, you'll disappear," says Rodrigo Canales, assistant professor of organizational behavior, who leads the course. "The barriers to innovation are real and predictable. There are ways to anticipate these barriers; they are not mysteries. You can find ways around them."