Innovation Black Belt Certification™ Requirements

The following requirements must be fulfilled to become an IPI certified Innovation Black Belt™. If you have further questions, please contact us by clicking the Contact Us button located at the bottom right corner of your screen.

Prerequisites

1. An applicant must be (or become) an IPI member in good standing.
2. An applicant must be a certified Innovation Green Belt™

Innovation Courses to Be Completed

1. Analysis and solution of system-related problems – 2
2. Failure prevention
3. Competitive patent analysis
4. Team leadership

For more details, you can download the Innovation Black Belt™ curriculum.

Innovation Projects to Be Conducted

1. Analysis and solution of a system-related problem
2. Failure prevention
3. Competitive patent analysis

Innovation Leadership Requirements

1. Teach 2 (two) Innovation Green Belt™ certification courses
2. Sponsor and lead to successful certification 3 (three) Innovation Green Belt™ candidates

Time Requirements

All the required activities have to be completed within 2 (two) year after finishing the educational part of the certification process

Comments and Clarifications

1. All the projects that are a required part of the certification process relate to a system of a candidate’s choice, which could be a product (a complete system, any sub-system, a part, etc.) or a process (a service, or a manufacturing process in its entirety or any of the stages of the production / service life-cycle such as transportation, storage, etc., or any transactional/business process such as procurement, negotiation, so on or any of their parts/stages/operations).
2. The project on “Analysis and Solution of a System-Related Problem” must address a failure in a system performance, its inability to achieve a goal. The nature of a failure has be either the presence of an undesired Event (for example, breakage of a part; overheating of an element; loss of functionality, excessive noise, etc.) or the absence of a desired Event (e.g. lack of heat transfer, absence of sound, inability to generate enough energy, etc.).
3. The “Failure Prevention” project consists in determining changes in the state of a system (see the description of this term above) that will result in creation of more robust system design (hence improved reliability and prevention of a failure) while maintaining (or improving) its performance.
4. The project on “Competitive Patent Analysis” consists in either eliminating competitors’ opportunity to develop a design-around thereby ensuring an applicant’s patent advantage OR developing a design-around thereby destroying the competitors’s advantage. The prerequisite for this project is a set of original IP (patents) to protect or design around.