Leadership for Organisational Innovation

In a rapidly evolving world, leading innovation across an organisation is an essential skill. Without constant innovation, organisations can’t remain competitive and relevant.

Most leaders agree that innovation is essential to long-term success, yet many organisations struggle to turn promising ideas into meaningful outcomes.

To drive successful results, leaders must stay open to new ideas, reshape cultures and create space and opportunity for innovative thinking.

This experience-led course helps leaders examine their biases and behaviours and understand the practical steps in fostering innovation in the workforce. Through academic insight, structured practice, reflection and peer learning, you’ll explore your own relationship with innovation, then learn how to enable and sustain it in others.

Across six modules, you’ll explore innovation at three levels: you, your team and your wider organisation. You’ll examine how innovation emerges, how you as a leader can encourage a creative culture and how experimentation can help you reduce both uncertainty and risk.

Working alongside an international cohort of professionals, you’ll apply everything you learn to your context and organisational challenges.

By the end of the course, you’ll have a personal innovation plan, which will equip you to influence culture, support creative behaviours and drive lasting organisational innovation.

Each module builds on the last, helping learners explore innovation through the lenses of self, teams and organisations. Throughout the course, learners reflect and understand the barriers and enablers shaping innovation within their own context.

By the end of the course, learners will consolidate their learnings to create a personalised innovation action plan for strengthening innovation within their own organisation.

• Module 1: Experiencing innovation

• Module 2: Reflecting forward

• Module 3: Developing insights

• Module 4: Exploring possibilities

• Module 5: Running experiments

• Module 6: Embedding change

As most of the learning in this course takes place in online workshops, you must attend at least 70% of the workshops in order to pass the course. Please speak with an enrolment advisor about options if this is a barrier for you. You can schedule a call with an enrolment advisor by selecting ‘Request a call’ above.

February 2027 online workshop schedules:

• Modules 1–6: From 4.30pm–5.30pm (UK time) on Wednesdays.

• Three additional 90-minute live sessions: Dates TBC

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Reflect on how your own relationship with innovation influences how you lead it.

• Identify the key enablers and limiters to innovation in teams and organisations.

• Select and implement activities that drive sustained innovation across varied team and organisational contexts.

• Formulate plans for specific interventions that embed innovation practices and mindsets throughout the organisation.

On successful completion of the course, you’ll receive a certificate from the University of Cambridge and a digital badge to display on your LinkedIn profile. These University of Cambridge credentials not only showcase your knowledge and expertise but also demonstrate your commitment to professional development – helping future-proof your career.

This course is designed for:

• Senior executives and C-suite leaders. Ideal for senior leaders who want to drive and sustain innovation across their organisation. Learn to respond confidently to disruption, strengthen existing practices and create the conditions for innovation within complex or fast-moving organisational environments.

• Managing directors. Perfect for leaders with ideas they are struggling to implement. Designed for those looking to lead innovation across teams, support innovation in others and identify approaches that work within their own organisational context.

• Senior managers and team leads. Relevant for individuals leading innovative initiatives in respective teams. Committed to fostering an innovative environment from a bottom-up approach, encouraging ideas to be translated from ideation to real and sustained execution within the organisation.

• Functional and change leaders. Designed for leaders who want to embed innovation in their own function and enable it in others. Driven to create psychologically safe environments that encourage experimentation, learning and appropriate risk-taking.

• Consultants and coaches. Valuable for consultants who need credible approaches to help clients foster innovation, navigate organisational change and create the conditions for innovation to thrive.

Our flexible, online courses – delivered via a world-leading learning platform – reflect the University of Cambridge experience and values, with low learner-to-tutor ratios and academically rigorous standards.

Designed for leaders, our learning model helps you advance your skills and lead in emerging areas. With a focused commitment of around 4 to 5 hours per week, you'll build your network through an engaging and impactful learning journey that encourages collaboration with academics, industry experts and fellow leaders.

Courses are delivered in weekly modules, allowing you to plan your time effectively around existing commitments. Live, interactive workshops with Cambridge academics and industry experts sit at the heart of the experience, bringing you the latest research in the field coupled with real-world insight.

Throughout your online learning experience with Cambridge Advance Online, you’ll have digital access to a dedicated course tutor, an expert in the field, who will help steer your learning and provide you with support and guidance every step of the way.