There are many great ideas in our world, but not all of them qualify as inventions. Of those that do qualify, even fewer have the necessary elements for commercial potential. How can you determine whether an idea can be turned into something more?

In this course, you will explore the interplay of ideas, innovation, and invention. Using an inventiveness analysis, you’ll leverage new techniques to determine what makes something truly inventive. You’ll also practice executing a prior art search by examining existing patents, technical literature, and general media to rule out any similar inventions.

By the end of this course, you will have the skills and tools needed to execute an in-depth analysis of an invention — a crucial foundation to ensure an invention is unique and distinct from other options in the market.

An invention may be a novel way to solve a problem, but does anybody want that problem solved? Is it worth the time and effort to develop that solution?

In this course, you will explore strategies for determining the market relevance of an invention. By analyzing each potential application of a given invention, you’ll start to parse out potential market segments. Using tools in this course, you’ll determine which market segment makes the most sense for your invention and your team, seeking out the avenue that is most likely to lead to profit.

By the end of this course, you will have the tools to forecast where an invention will have the most market relevance, setting you up for success.

To take an idea from its inception to its fully developed potential, it is crucial to properly protect and secure the invention. In this course, you will explore the different options for protecting inventions and investigate how each option can be leveraged strategically. Starting with the patent, you’ll explore the full process for how to obtain one, discovering tips and tricks for how to best craft a quality claim.

Moving on to other intellectual property tools like trade secrets, trademarks, and copyrights, as well as bioproperty tools, you’ll analyze which option makes the most sense for a particular invention. By the end of this course, you’ll have strategies to identify and secure supportive protections for an invention.

Once you have articulated and documented an invention’s unique qualities, identified the applicable intellectual and bioproperty tools, and determined the market segment, you will be able to create a winning package to start the commercialization process. Defining a clear and realistic path to market will help ensure your success.

In this course, you will examine how to maximize the value proposition for a given invention for your desired market segment. You’ll explore how to identify and analyze risks associated with an invention and how to frame those risks in your opportunity package. By leveraging a tool originally developed by NASA, you’ll determine the steps needed to bring an invention to market and develop a roadmap for meeting that goal.

By the end of this course, you will be able to bring all the pieces of an opportunity package together, giving you the foundation needed to begin thinking about a business development plan going forward.

One of the most impactful stages of the invention and intellectual property management processes is embarking on the commercialization journey. In this course, you will explore the different options for commercializing an invention and identify how to select the best option for your needs.

Whether your team will take on internal development, pursue a licensing route, or even initiate a startup outside of your organization, you will determine the pathway and the partnership model that is most likely to lead to success. By investigating both the commercialization pathway and the partnership model, you’ll ultimately be able to propose the combination best fit for a given invention.

While bringing one invention to market is a crucial skill, developing a system and processes for long-term invention management is necessary for the success of your team’s innovative ventures.

In this course, you will examine how to establish a system for invention management at your organization. By leading ideas through an official documentation process, you’ll discover strategies for helping ideas to become inventions and develop a plan to stimulate ideas and finalize details around the invention or innovation. You’ll then refine a practice for guiding inventions through the development process.

To support the invention management process, you will explore best practices for working with lawyers, giving you a key skill set for invention and intellectual property management. By the end of this course, you’ll have a plan in place to create and manage an invention system in your organization and facilitate a mindset geared toward unlocking the commercial potential of inventions.

eCornell Online Workshops are live, interactive 3-hour learning experiences led by Cornell faculty experts. These premium short-format sessions focus on AI topics and are designed for busy professionals who want to gain immediately applicable skills and strategic perspectives. Workshops include faculty presentations, breakout discussions, guided hands-on practice, and downloadable resources.

The AI Workshops All-Access Pass provides you with unlimited participation for 6 months from your date of purchase. Whether you choose to attend one workshop per month, or several per week, the All-Access Pass will allow you to customize your AI journey and stay on top of the latest AI trends.

Workshops cover a range of cutting-edge AI topics applicable across industries, hosted by Cornell faculty at the forefront of their fields. Whether you are just getting started with AI, seeking to build your AI skillset, or exploring advanced applications of AI, Workshops will provide you with an action-oriented learning experience for immediate application in your career. Sample Workshops include:

  • Work Smarter with AI Agents: Individual and Team Effectiveness
  • Leading AI Transformation: Bigger Than You Imagine, Harder Than You Expect
  • Using AI at Work: Practical Choices and Better Results
  • Search & Discoverability in the Era of AI
  • Don’t Just Prompt AI – Govern it
  • AI-Powered Product Manager
  • Leverage AI and Human Connection to Lead through Uncertainty

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How It Works

Frequently Asked Questions

Turning a promising idea into a commercially viable invention often breaks down at two points: choosing the right protection strategy and making clear, evidence-based commercialization decisions. Cornell’s Invention and IP Management Certificate is built to help you move from “We have an idea” to “We have a defendable, marketable opportunity” using practical tools you can apply to your own innovation context.

In this certificate program, authored by faculty from Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, you will explore how to gauge market potential, define what makes an idea truly inventive, and evaluate benefits and costs so you can prioritize what is worth protecting and investing in. You’ll practice selecting an intellectual property or bioproperty strategy that fits the invention, the competitive landscape, and your business goals, then translate your thinking into a clear summary you can use with key stakeholders.

You will also have the opportunity to compare different commercialization and implementation pathways then work toward an invention management system and mindset that help a team consistently capture and act on invention opportunities.

If you want a clearer IP strategy, stronger commercialization decision making, and a repeatable approach to managing inventions, you should choose Cornell's Invention and IP Management Certificate.

Many online IP or innovation courses are either purely self-paced or heavily theoretical, which can make it hard to turn concepts into a decision you can defend inside your organization. Cornell’s Invention and IP Management Certificate uses an expert-facilitated model that is designed to keep your work grounded in real-world decision making, not just terminology.

Rather than relying on automated grading, eCornell courses emphasize practical, on-the-job projects and competency-based assessment, with feedback that helps you refine your thinking and improve the quality of your outputs. You receive guidance from an expert facilitator who helps you apply program frameworks to your own invention, pipeline, or portfolio questions.

Just as importantly, the Invention and IP Management Certificate content is designed by Cornell faculty, and the program is explicitly oriented around the moments that matter most in invention commercialization: clarifying what is truly inventive, choosing an appropriate IP or bioproperty approach, evaluating marketability and competitive risk at a high level, and selecting an implementation or commercialization pathway that fits your context.

Enrolling in Cornell’s Invention and IP Management Certificate also provides you with a 6-month All-Access Pass to eCornell's live online AI Workshops, interactive sessions led by world-class Cornell faculty that combine Ivy League insight with practical applications for busy professionals. Each 3-hour Workshop features structured instruction, guided practice, and real tools to build competitive AI capabilities, plus the opportunity to connect with a global cohort of growth-oriented peers. While AI Workshops are not required, they enhance certificate programs through:

  • Integrating AI perspectives across most curricula
  • Responding to emerging AI developments and trends
  • Offering direct engagement with Cornell faculty at the forefront of AI research

Cornell’s Invention and IP Management Certificate is designed for professionals who contribute to creating, evaluating, protecting, or commercializing innovations and want a more structured, business-relevant way to manage invention decisions.

The Invention and IP Management Certificate is a strong fit if you are:

  • An entrepreneur evaluating how to protect and commercialize a new product or process
  • An IP manager, invention or innovation manager building repeatable invention capture and evaluation practices
  • An engineer or scientist translating technical novelty into an invention narrative that stakeholders can act on
  • An R&D or business development professional assessing marketability and implementation options
  • A tech transfer professional supporting invention disclosures and commercialization pathways
  • A business manager or consultant who needs to connect invention work to measurable business value and risk decisions

Cornell’s Invention and IP Management Certificate is also useful if you regularly collaborate with legal counsel or external partners and want to communicate more clearly about inventiveness, protection options, and commercialization choices.

Your work in Cornell’s Invention and IP Management Certificate program is designed to produce practical outputs you can use immediately, especially when you need to evaluate an invention’s viability, align on a protection approach, and communicate clearly with decision makers.

In the Invention and IP Management Certificate, you will build and refine deliverables such as:

  • An analysis that distinguishes a general idea from an inventive concept, including the inventive features that matter
  • A structured market and viability assessment using program tools to define uniqueness, competitiveness, and commercial potential
  • A draft invention summary or disclosure-style narrative designed to communicate the invention to key stakeholders
  • A high-level comparison of protection options (including intellectual property and bioproperty tools) to support a recommendation that fits your situation
  • A commercialization and implementation pathway evaluation that clarifies trade-offs across options
  • A recommendation for an invention management system for your team, including practices that support an invention management mindset

Across Cornell’s Invention and IP Management Certificate, you will be pushed to make explicit choices, justify assumptions, and connect invention decisions to value creation and risk reduction.

Cornell’s Invention and IP Management Certificate equips you to make clearer, faster, and more defensible decisions about protecting and commercializing innovation.

After completing the Invention and IP Management Certificate, you will be prepared to:

  • Define what makes an idea inventive
  • Explore the benefits and costs of an invention
  • Explore additional intellectual property and bioproperty tools to help protect your invention
  • Assess the inventive features, property control position, and marketability of an invention to identify potential value
  • Select the best commercialization and implementation pathway for an invention
  • Establish a system for managing and collecting inventions

Professionals looking for practical career impact commonly value the program’s emphasis on real-world IP decision making, including translating an invention into a strong invention disclosure and IP strategy; understanding patentability basics and claim scope trade-offs; comparing patents, trade secrets, copyrights, and trademarks for different scenarios; and evaluating freedom-to-operate and competitive IP landscape risk at a high level. Learners can also expect practice in structuring licensing, collaboration, and NDA considerations; building and prioritizing an IP portfolio aligned to product and business goals; and communicating effectively with technical teams, legal counsel, and business stakeholders. Over time, these capabilities can strengthen credibility in innovation discussions, increase effectiveness in cross-functional work, and help connect invention activity to measurable business value.

What truly sets eCornell apart is how our programs unlock genuine career transformation. Learners earn promotions to senior positions, enjoy meaningful salary growth, build valuable professional networks, and navigate successful career transitions.

Cornell’s Invention and IP Management Certificate is delivered through our Mentored Learning format and consists of 6 courses requiring approximately 11 to 12 hours of study for each, or 70 hours of coursework in total. You have up to 6 months to complete all necessary components, though you may finish in fewer than 6 months depending on your schedule. The program allows you to follow an individualized structured learning agenda with a flexible approach that includes interaction and project feedback with your expert facilitator. You'll also complete graded projects that let you apply learning concepts to on-the-job situations.

Throughout the Invention and IP Management Certificate program, your expert facilitator provides personalized feedback on all projects and offers opportunities for 1:1 mentoring sessions as you progress. This guided approach allows you to ask questions and receive support as you work through practical applications and real-world scenarios.

A law degree is not a prerequisite for Cornell’s Invention and IP Management Certificate, and the intended audience includes many non-lawyer roles such as entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, R&D professionals, business managers, and consultants.

The Invention and IP Management Certificate is designed to help you make better IP and commercialization decisions in practice, including learning how to compare different protection approaches and communicate effectively with legal counsel and business stakeholders. If you are ready to engage with structured frameworks, make trade-offs explicit, and apply the tools to your own innovation context, you can be successful without prior legal training.

Throughout Cornell’s Invention and IP Management Certificate, you will have the opportunity to build a decision-oriented approach to protection strategy, including how to compare major forms of intellectual property for different innovation scenarios. The curriculum emphasizes evaluating the fit among the invention, the competitive landscape, and your commercialization goals, so your protection choices align to value and risk.

You can expect to work through considerations such as patentability basics and claim scope trade-offs, when trade secrecy may be more appropriate, and how trademarks and copyrights can support commercialization depending on what you are trying to protect. The Invention and IP Management Certificate program also highlights high-level risk factors such as freedom-to-operate and competitive IP landscape concerns so you can spot issues early and coordinate effectively with counsel.

Commercialization often depends on whether you can explain the invention clearly, show why it is competitive, and make a credible case for the right go-to-market or implementation path. In Cornell’s Invention and IP Management Certificate, you will practice using structured tools to clarify uniqueness, competitiveness, and viability, then translate that analysis into a concise invention summary designed for key stakeholders.

From there, you will explore different commercialization and implementation pathways and learn best practices for navigating each pathway. Cornell's Invention and IP Management Certificate program also covers practical considerations that frequently influence stakeholder alignment, such as licensing, collaboration, and NDA considerations, as well as building an IP portfolio aligned to product and business goals so commercialization decisions are connected to measurable value.

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{Anytime, anywhere.}
Ezra Cornell
Founder of Cornell University