Online Certificate in Methods & Tools for Product Innovation
Earn a Product Innovation Certificate in one semester with CMU’s Integrated Innovation Institute
With any great innovation, it’s the people behind the product who drive it forward. Our 100% online Methods & Tools for Product Innovation Certificate program equips you to spot promising opportunities and develop thoughtful, human-centered solutions by integrating business, design and engineering principles.
Methods & Tools for Product Innovation
Summer 2026, Fall 2026
Offered through Carnegie Mellon University’s Integrated Innovation Institute (iii), this program helps you learn by doing, so you can go from blank slate to prototypes in a matter of weeks.
- Learn to lead interviews and apply proven research methods to uncover the problems your product can solve.
- Explore how to gather data to investigate new possibilities, transform unstructured data into meaningful insights via analysis tools and ensure that the human experience is always at the heart of what you create.
Our certificate program provides a practical, end-to-end foundation for turning insights into innovative solutions.
Why should you pursue CMU’s Methods & Tools for Product Innovation Certificate?
Flexible online product innovation certificate program
At the iii, we believe real interaction matters, so our online courses are fully synchronous for live collaboration and meet every other week. The certificate consists of two courses that you can complete in one semester or in two separate semesters to fit your schedule.
Stackable certificates designed to stand alone or build toward a master’s degree in product innovation
This certificate program is part of the stackable online Master of Integrated Innovation for Products & Services (MIIPS). Earn your degree one certificate at a time. After completing all four online certificates, you’ll take a capstone course to complete the MIIPS degree.
The other certificate programs are:
- New Product Management Certificate
- Product Design Innovation Certificate
- Technology for Product Management Certificate
Gain product innovation skills that employers value
Through hands-on project-based learning, you develop the tools to take ideas from early concepts to compelling product solutions. You’ll use ethnographic research to identify user-centered opportunities, apply analysis frameworks to make data-driven decisions and practice visual communication techniques that present ideas clearly and effectively.
You’ll build:
- The ability to leverage an innovation process, starting with white space and finishing with an innovative product concept.
- Methods to gain specific insights into human needs — the foundation of any product and service opportunity.
- Tools to analyze unstructured data to discover insights relevant to developing new products.
Explore the iii Online Experience
"The online and hybrid nature of the program drew me in, because it offered access to a great institution with the flexibility to maintain a full-time job in Atlanta. I have found the program to be very manageable with my full-time work in addition to flexible time for family, friends, and other personal projects. Balancing my 9-5 job with the course allowed me to apply what I learned directly to my work.
The program's focus on product development, research, and collaboration has positively impacted my daily role, helping me generate new ideas and align them with business goals. The connections I've made with professors and students have been invaluable for expanding my perspectives, gaining market exposure, and building lasting friendships."
- Seth Mitchell, current MIIPS Online Degree student
Curriculum for the Methods & Tools for Product Innovation Certificate
This certificate consists of two product innovation courses. The first teaches a structured product innovation process. The second focuses on user research methods that help you understand people, their needs and the contexts in which products live.
Course 1: 49-604, Innovation Processes & Tools
- Learn and use an innovation process: identifying, understanding, and conceptualizing.
- Gain knowledge to assess trends, identify opportunities, and uncover value propositions.
- Focus on communication skills — both verbal and visual.
- Implement an innovation process, leading to the final deliverable of a product concept.
This course covers early stages of a product innovation process: identifying, understanding, and then conceptualizing a product opportunity. The course presents fundamental tools to assess trends, identify opportunities, identify and uncover the value proposition of key stakeholders, articulate the value proposition, define product requirements, and conceptualize solutions. Because innovation insights and ideas are new and can be abstract without additional effort, it is important that students learn how to make ideas more concrete via visual communication techniques. As such, communication of work and findings are core to this course.
- Industrial design sketching
- Information visualization & dashboards
- Graphic user interface design
- Executive summary and pitch decks
- Visual brand language, templates and styling
- Visual explanations
- Storyboarding and making simple videos
Course 2: 49-605, User Experience Research for Digital and Physical Products
Pre/Co-requisite: 49-604 - Innovation Processes & Tools
- Learn methods of user research, from interviewing to ethnographic techniques.
- Use ethnography in a project, both in digital and traditional settings.
- Plan research and collect, analyze and synthesize data into a research report that identifies specific opportunities to innovate with new offerings.
This course will teach the basic methods of user research, including one-on-one interviewing and ethnographic techniques. To master certain skills, students will dive deeper into one method. Students apply the basic principles of ethnography in a project as participant observers in both digital and traditional settings.
Students will plan the research, collect data, analyze, and synthesize what was learned, and present a research report that identifies not only what was observed, but also interprets its meaning and indicates opportunities to innovate with new offerings. Although the course will focus on qualitative and primary research, the benefits of quantitative and secondary research will also be addressed. The course includes lectures and discussions, along with readings and research assignments.
Alumni Spotlight
Marciano Bagnoli (MIIPS Online ’23) credits our online certificates for giving him the flexibility to earn a master’s degree while exploring new career paths.
Our online application is always open
The Integrated Innovation Institute’s online programs attract career-driven professionals seeking a flexible structure that allows them to continue working full-time while advancing their skills.
Highly qualified candidates are passionate about product and service development, innovation or entrepreneurship and typically come from backgrounds that align with these interests. Sound like you?