Karan Girotra is a Professor at Cornell Tech and in the Johnson School at Cornell University. Karan collaborates with companies building new business models in the areas of urban living, smart transportation and e-commerce, helping them build rigorous research based solutions. Karan’s research team has been recognized by multiple awards including the prestigious Wickham Skinner Early Career Research Award and multiple best paper awards. He has also won teaching awards for his teaching on entrepreneurship and new business models and was featured in the Poets and Quant’s Best 40 under 40 business professors lists. In addition to his academic work, Karan was one of the founders of Terrapass Inc., which the New York Times identified as one of the most noteworthy ideas of 2005. Since then, TerraPass has helped businesses and individuals reduce over hundred million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Karan holds PhD and AM degrees from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
Overview and Courses
In today’s accelerated world, data and digital technology are disrupting every industry and creating new opportunities for business transformation.
This certificate program will help you develop the digital leadership skills and mindset needed to thrive in this rapidly evolving digital landscape. You’ll start with a digital audit of your organization and then learn to identify and implement new opportunities to drive competitive advantage through innovation and technology. From there, you’ll be able to choose the focus area most relevant to you, including agile leadership, systems thinking, blockchain, or data analytics.
Ultimately, you’ll come away better prepared to lead digital transformation initiatives to success in your organization or start-up.
Since the advent of the internet, programmers have been trying to figure out how to create a [digital] world in which people anywhere - even complete strangers - can transact directly with one another safely and efficiently. In essence, they have been trying to recreate the bedrock of civilization: an orderly system of bookkeeping that allows people to trust each other's claims about what they own, what they owe, and what they are owed. For most of the digital age, this “trust” has been facilitated by third parties such as banks, governments, or credible companies that are willing to guarantee that a transaction is valid and secure. But transactions via third parties are slow and expensive, and they cannot be verified by just anyone, which opens the door to fraud and theft.
Today, the notion of a secure and trusted third party in a digital world isn't purely mythical. And in fact, it's exactly what blockchain technology embodies in a kind of magical way. In this course, you will explore the mechanics of blockchain technology and how the blockchain acts like a trusted third party. To do this, Professor Ari Juels will design a theoretical cryptocurrency from scratch to illustrate how Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies make use of the blockchain to transfer value from person to person. Then, once you understand how the blockchain acts as a trusted ledger, you will practice articulating other transformative ways in which blockchains can change how commercial and interpersonal connections happen online.
Cryptography has been around for thousands of years and is at the heart of digital communications today. Most people rely on cryptography on a daily basis without even knowing it; most popular messaging apps use encryption to ensure the security of messaging between two people. Blockchain technology, in a similar way, relies on cryptography to protect the identity of those sending and receiving messages and ensures that all information and transactions are secure and legitimate. Thus, to really understand blockchain technology, you have to understand the core principles of cryptography.
This course will walk you through the basics of cryptography: how information has historically been disguised (encrypted) and revealed (decrypted) using mathematics. You will see how a message can be turned into a number, and how that number can be encrypted and decrypted by two complete strangers. You will practice encrypting your own message to understand the basics of what makes a good encryption scheme. Then, you will delve deeper into the specific type of cryptography used in blockchain technology -- public key cryptography - and the promises and limitations it has in carrying out the core functions of a blockchain. You will create your own theoretical gold exchange in order to more fully understand how you can send anything to anyone around the world without a middleman. Ultimately you will know exactly how information on the blockchain is secured, legitimized, and authenticated without needing a third party to verify it.
You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:
- Cryptocurrencies and Ledgers
Whether you need to tackle a complex project, communicate more effectively, rethink your organization or your job, solve world hunger, or figure out your teenager, systems thinking can help you. All of these are complex and challenging real-world problems, sometimes called wicked problems. We all confront problems, big and small, in our personal and professional lives, and most of us are searching for better ways to solve them. In this course, Professors Derek and Laura Cabrera will demonstrate how we can use systems thinking to solve everyday and wicked problems, to transform our organizations, and to increase our personal effectiveness.
At its core, systems thinking attempts to better align the way we think with how the real world works. Our thinking is based on our mental models, but these models, created from our unique perspective with its inherent biases, are usually inadequate representations of reality. The Cabreras illustrate how we can use feedback to recognize and adapt our mental models so that they better align with reality, enhancing our problem-solving capabilities.
For systems thinking to be successful, it must be adaptive. In this course, you will explore the concept of complex adaptive systems, and while these systems seem unnecessarily complicated, the Cabreras will reveal a surprising discovery. Underlying all complex adaptive systems are simple rules, and applying these rules is the key to transforming the way we frame and solve everyday problems.
For organizations to succeed, they need to develop individuals who are constantly learning and adapting according to information on the ground. Sharing key mental models—at the organizational, team, and individual levels—is critical to creating a culture of learning that enables the organization to survive and thrive through chaos and complexity.
In this course, Professors Derek and Laura Cabrera demonstrate how to become a systems leader; that is, someone who can use systems thinking at the organizational level, at the team level, and at the individual level. You will create a culture for your organization that is built on shared mental models and develop techniques to incentivize thought leaders to support the culture based on your vision, mission, capacity, and learning. At the team level, where the real work of the organization gets done, you will explore the process of building, sharing and evolving mental models through collaborative mapping and feedback processes. And finally, you will turn your own thinking into doing, to ensure that your actions are aligned with key organizational mental models. With tools, techniques, and expert guidance, you can begin to implement systems thinking at all levels of the organization, creating teams and individuals upon which organizational culture, values, and success are built.
When your audience can quickly and efficiently understand what the data is telling them without having to scour every row and column, they can gain insights from your analysis more efficiently. In this course, you will apply the power of Excel pivot tables to see your data from multiple perspectives, use data visualization techniques that effectively communicate your analysis to your audience, create charts that quickly and clearly visualize your analysis, and apply the principles of graphical integrity to your charts.
In order to execute the most informed business analyses, we need the right tools for making predictions from data. Excel provides powerful predictive analytic tools that let the user forecast trends and make predictions with historical data.
In this course, you will conduct financial analyses by comparing loan scenarios using financial functions, identifying what values are needed to achieve a desired result, and quickly identifying how changes in your data will impact outcomes. You will leave this course with the ability to leverage reliable historical data to generate simulations and make predictions.
How It Works
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Faculty Authors
Mukti Khaire is Girish and Jaidev Reddy Professor of Practice at Cornell Tech and the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. She received a PhD in Management in 2006 from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. Before that, she completed a Masters in Management from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) – Bombay and a Master of Science in Environmental Science and a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from the University of Pune, India. Prior to joining Cornell Tech in 2016, she was on the faculty of Harvard Business School (Entrepreneurial Management Unit; 2005-2016) and spent a year as Visiting Faculty in Brown University (Sociology; 2015-2016).
Mukti’s research focuses on entrepreneurship in the creative industries, such as art, advertising, architecture and design, fashion, film, music, publishing, and theater. In particular, she is interested in understanding how entrepreneurs create markets for new categories of cultural goods by constructing their value, while also changing consumers’ beliefs about what attributes of cultural goods are appropriate and valuable. In this vein, Mukti studied the creation of a market for modern Indian art and the rise and establishment of the high-end fashion industry in India. Her work, which has been published in leading business and management journals, has shed light on the structure and functioning of creative industries and the business and societal implications of entrepreneurship in the cultural sector. Mukti has also authored 35 teaching cases on firms in the creative industries.
Ari Juels is a professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, a Computer Science faculty member at Cornell University, and Co-Director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3). He was previously Chief Scientist at RSA, now a division of Dell.
His recent areas of interest include blockchains, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts, as well as applied cryptography, cloud security, user authentication, and privacy. He has published over one hundred highly cited research papers, including many on digital currency, cryptocurrency, and blockchains.
Prof. Juels received a BA in Latin Literature and Mathematics from Amherst College (1991) and a PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley (1996).
Rafael Pass is a Professor at Cornell Tech and in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University. He obtained his bachelor’s in Engineering Physics and a master’s in Computer Science, both from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in 2006. He has been on the faculty of Cornell University since 2006 and joined Cornell Tech in 2013. Professor Pass’ research interests are in the field of Cryptography and its interplay with Computational Complexity and Game Theory. Previously, Pass worked in the finance industry for J.P. Morgan and Price Waterhouse Coopers, and studied logic and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. He is a recipient of the NSF Career Award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and the Microsoft Faculty Award.
General George W. Casey, Jr. enjoyed a 41-year career in the U.S. Army following his graduation from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1970. He is an accomplished soldier and an authority on strategic leadership. As the Army Chief of Staff, he led one of our largest and most complex organizations during one of the most extraordinary periods in our history. He is widely credited with restoring balance to a war-weary Army and leading the transformation to keep it relevant in the 21st Century. Prior to this, from July 2004 to February 2007, he commanded the Multi-National Force – Iraq, a coalition of more than 30 countries. He guided the Iraq mission through its toughest days and set the conditions for our long-term success.
Currently, he lectures internationally on leadership to the leaders of national and multinational corporations and at other business schools. He serves on several corporate boards and numerous boards of organizations that support our servicemen and women, our veterans, and their families. He also teaches international relations at the Korbel School in Denver.
He has published a book, Strategic Reflections, Operation Iraqi Freedom, July 2004-2007 (October 2012), about his experiences in Iraq, and two articles on leadership: “Leading in a VUCA World”, Fortune Magazine (March 20, 2014), and “Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous: Leadership Lessons from Iraq”, Chapter 1, Changing Mindsets to Transform Security, (December 2013).
He holds a Masters Degree in International Relations from Denver University, and served as a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States, a foreign policy think-tank. He has broad international experience. Born in Japan, he served in operational assignments in Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East.
Derek Cabrera (PhD, Cornell) is a systems scientist, Professor, and social entrepreneur and is internationally known for his work in systems thinking, systems leadership, and systems modeling. He is currently visiting faculty at Cornell University where he teaches systems thinking and organizational leadership and design. He is senior scientist at Cabrera Research Lab, and Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Plectica. He has given two TED Talks, written and produced a rap song, a children’s book on cognition, and authored numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles. His research has been profiled in peer-reviewed journals, trade magazines, and popular publications, and he is author of eight books including, Systems Thinking Made Simple: New Hope for Solving Wicked Problems (winner of the 2017 AECT outstanding book award), Thinking at Every Desk: Four Simple Skills to Transform Your Classroom, and Flock Not Clock: Align People, Processes, and Systems to Achieve your Vision. Credited with discovering the underlying rules of systems thinking, Cabrera is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Systems Thinking. His work in public schools was documented in the full-length documentary film, RE:Thinking. He was Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) for the Study of Complex Systems and National Science Foundation IGERT Fellow in Nonlinear Systems in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Cornell University. As a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow, he developed new techniques to model systems approaches in the evaluation of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Cabrera was awarded the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ K. Patricia Cross Future Educational Leaders Award. He serves on the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Systems Engineering Advisory Board. His contributions to the field of systems thinking have been integrated into NSF, NIH, and USDA-NIFA programs, K-12, higher education, NGOs, federal agencies, corporations, and business schools. His systems models are used by many of Silicon Valley’s most innovative companies. Systems Thinking Made Simple is used as an introductory text for undergraduate and graduate students in numerous colleges and universities including Cornell University and West Point Military Academy. Cabrera has developed and patented a suite of systems thinking tools for use in academia, business, and beyond. Prior to becoming a scientist, Cabrera worked for fifteen years around the world as a mountain guide and experiential educator for Outward Bound and other organizations and has climbed many of the world’s highest mountains. He holds a PhD from Cornell University and lives in Ithaca, NY, with his wife, Laura Cabrera, three children, and four dogs.
Laura is Plectica’s Chief Research Officer.
For over 15 years, Laura has conducted translational research to increase public understanding, application, and dissemination of systems science, including for USDA, the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, HHS, and the Dept. of Justice.
She is also a senior researcher at Cabrera Research Lab, has authored five books on systems thinking and its applications, and is a member of the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Systems Engineering Advisory Board.
Laura holds a PhD in Policy Analysis and Management, a Master’s in Public Administration, and a B.A., all from Cornell.
Her family is her favorite system…
Donna L. Haeger is a Professor of Practice in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. She teaches introductory and advanced spreadsheet-modeling courses for applied decision-making. These courses leverage Microsoft Excel as a business analytics tool. Prior to teaching at Cornell, she taught courses in management theory, organizational behavior and marketing. With over twenty years in industry, her corporate experience includes work in investments, banking, and corporate finance. Dr. Haeger is the business analytics concentration coordinator and chaired the task force responsible for launching the concentration. Her research interests are at the intersection of organizational behavior and digitization. She explores technology in the workplace, leadership, teams, and management. Her contributions relate to influence and intergenerational exchanges in an effort to blend human systems. Haeger presents her research at the Academy of Management and other leadership associations. She also enjoys mentoring students interested in undergraduate research, especially when the products serve to better communities. She currently sits on the board of directors for Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Rochester which specializes in spreading financial literacy to communities.
Karan Girotra is a Professor at Cornell Tech and in the Johnson School at Cornell University. Karan collaborates with companies building new business models in the areas of urban living, smart transportation and e-commerce, helping them build rigorous research based solutions. Karan’s research team has been recognized by multiple awards including the prestigious Wickham Skinner Early Career Research Award and multiple best paper awards. He has also won teaching awards for his teaching on entrepreneurship and new business models and was featured in the Poets and Quant’s Best 40 under 40 business professors lists. In addition to his academic work, Karan was one of the founders of Terrapass Inc., which the New York Times identified as one of the most noteworthy ideas of 2005. Since then, TerraPass has helped businesses and individuals reduce over hundred million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Karan holds PhD and AM degrees from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
Mukti Khaire is Girish and Jaidev Reddy Professor of Practice at Cornell Tech and the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. She received a PhD in Management in 2006 from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. Before that, she completed a Masters in Management from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) – Bombay and a Master of Science in Environmental Science and a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from the University of Pune, India. Prior to joining Cornell Tech in 2016, she was on the faculty of Harvard Business School (Entrepreneurial Management Unit; 2005-2016) and spent a year as Visiting Faculty in Brown University (Sociology; 2015-2016).
Mukti’s research focuses on entrepreneurship in the creative industries, such as art, advertising, architecture and design, fashion, film, music, publishing, and theater. In particular, she is interested in understanding how entrepreneurs create markets for new categories of cultural goods by constructing their value, while also changing consumers’ beliefs about what attributes of cultural goods are appropriate and valuable. In this vein, Mukti studied the creation of a market for modern Indian art and the rise and establishment of the high-end fashion industry in India. Her work, which has been published in leading business and management journals, has shed light on the structure and functioning of creative industries and the business and societal implications of entrepreneurship in the cultural sector. Mukti has also authored 35 teaching cases on firms in the creative industries.
Ari Juels is a professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, a Computer Science faculty member at Cornell University, and Co-Director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3). He was previously Chief Scientist at RSA, now a division of Dell.
His recent areas of interest include blockchains, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts, as well as applied cryptography, cloud security, user authentication, and privacy. He has published over one hundred highly cited research papers, including many on digital currency, cryptocurrency, and blockchains.
Prof. Juels received a BA in Latin Literature and Mathematics from Amherst College (1991) and a PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley (1996).
Rafael Pass is a Professor at Cornell Tech and in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University. He obtained his bachelor’s in Engineering Physics and a master’s in Computer Science, both from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in 2006. He has been on the faculty of Cornell University since 2006 and joined Cornell Tech in 2013. Professor Pass’ research interests are in the field of Cryptography and its interplay with Computational Complexity and Game Theory. Previously, Pass worked in the finance industry for J.P. Morgan and Price Waterhouse Coopers, and studied logic and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. He is a recipient of the NSF Career Award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and the Microsoft Faculty Award.
General George W. Casey, Jr. enjoyed a 41-year career in the U.S. Army following his graduation from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1970. He is an accomplished soldier and an authority on strategic leadership. As the Army Chief of Staff, he led one of our largest and most complex organizations during one of the most extraordinary periods in our history. He is widely credited with restoring balance to a war-weary Army and leading the transformation to keep it relevant in the 21st Century. Prior to this, from July 2004 to February 2007, he commanded the Multi-National Force – Iraq, a coalition of more than 30 countries. He guided the Iraq mission through its toughest days and set the conditions for our long-term success.
Currently, he lectures internationally on leadership to the leaders of national and multinational corporations and at other business schools. He serves on several corporate boards and numerous boards of organizations that support our servicemen and women, our veterans, and their families. He also teaches international relations at the Korbel School in Denver.
He has published a book, Strategic Reflections, Operation Iraqi Freedom, July 2004-2007 (October 2012), about his experiences in Iraq, and two articles on leadership: “Leading in a VUCA World”, Fortune Magazine (March 20, 2014), and “Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous: Leadership Lessons from Iraq”, Chapter 1, Changing Mindsets to Transform Security, (December 2013).
He holds a Masters Degree in International Relations from Denver University, and served as a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States, a foreign policy think-tank. He has broad international experience. Born in Japan, he served in operational assignments in Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East.
Derek Cabrera (PhD, Cornell) is a systems scientist, Professor, and social entrepreneur and is internationally known for his work in systems thinking, systems leadership, and systems modeling. He is currently visiting faculty at Cornell University where he teaches systems thinking and organizational leadership and design. He is senior scientist at Cabrera Research Lab, and Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Plectica. He has given two TED Talks, written and produced a rap song, a children’s book on cognition, and authored numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles. His research has been profiled in peer-reviewed journals, trade magazines, and popular publications, and he is author of eight books including, Systems Thinking Made Simple: New Hope for Solving Wicked Problems (winner of the 2017 AECT outstanding book award), Thinking at Every Desk: Four Simple Skills to Transform Your Classroom, and Flock Not Clock: Align People, Processes, and Systems to Achieve your Vision. Credited with discovering the underlying rules of systems thinking, Cabrera is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Systems Thinking. His work in public schools was documented in the full-length documentary film, RE:Thinking. He was Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) for the Study of Complex Systems and National Science Foundation IGERT Fellow in Nonlinear Systems in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Cornell University. As a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow, he developed new techniques to model systems approaches in the evaluation of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Cabrera was awarded the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ K. Patricia Cross Future Educational Leaders Award. He serves on the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Systems Engineering Advisory Board. His contributions to the field of systems thinking have been integrated into NSF, NIH, and USDA-NIFA programs, K-12, higher education, NGOs, federal agencies, corporations, and business schools. His systems models are used by many of Silicon Valley’s most innovative companies. Systems Thinking Made Simple is used as an introductory text for undergraduate and graduate students in numerous colleges and universities including Cornell University and West Point Military Academy. Cabrera has developed and patented a suite of systems thinking tools for use in academia, business, and beyond. Prior to becoming a scientist, Cabrera worked for fifteen years around the world as a mountain guide and experiential educator for Outward Bound and other organizations and has climbed many of the world’s highest mountains. He holds a PhD from Cornell University and lives in Ithaca, NY, with his wife, Laura Cabrera, three children, and four dogs.
Laura is Plectica’s Chief Research Officer.
For over 15 years, Laura has conducted translational research to increase public understanding, application, and dissemination of systems science, including for USDA, the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, HHS, and the Dept. of Justice.
She is also a senior researcher at Cabrera Research Lab, has authored five books on systems thinking and its applications, and is a member of the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Systems Engineering Advisory Board.
Laura holds a PhD in Policy Analysis and Management, a Master’s in Public Administration, and a B.A., all from Cornell.
Her family is her favorite system…
Donna L. Haeger is a Professor of Practice in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. She teaches introductory and advanced spreadsheet-modeling courses for applied decision-making. These courses leverage Microsoft Excel as a business analytics tool. Prior to teaching at Cornell, she taught courses in management theory, organizational behavior and marketing. With over twenty years in industry, her corporate experience includes work in investments, banking, and corporate finance. Dr. Haeger is the business analytics concentration coordinator and chaired the task force responsible for launching the concentration. Her research interests are at the intersection of organizational behavior and digitization. She explores technology in the workplace, leadership, teams, and management. Her contributions relate to influence and intergenerational exchanges in an effort to blend human systems. Haeger presents her research at the Academy of Management and other leadership associations. She also enjoys mentoring students interested in undergraduate research, especially when the products serve to better communities. She currently sits on the board of directors for Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Rochester which specializes in spreading financial literacy to communities.
Key Course Takeaways
- Cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset in how you approach new business opportunities within an organization
- Explain what the classic problem in cryptography is and how cryptographic keys relate to blockchains
- Examine the design of a cryptocurrency to understand the function of blockchains
- Identify the impact and antidotes for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity
- Conduct a builder audit to assess product ideation in your organization
- Devise more effective approaches to managing complex systems, situations, processes, and problems
- Leverage Excel’s business analytics and modeling capabilities
- Make analytical predictions and forecasts using your formatted data sets
Download a Brochure
Not ready to enroll but want to learn more? Download the certificate brochure to review program details.
What You'll Earn
- Digital Leadership Certificate from Cornell Tech
- 40 Professional Development Hours (4 CEUs)
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Who Should Enroll
- Business leaders
- Technology leaders, including CTOs
- Entrepreneurs
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Digital Leadership
| Select Payment Method | Cost |
|---|---|
| $3,600 | |