The following requirements must be fulfilled to become an IPI Certified Innovation Black Belt®. If you have further questions, please contact us by sending your message to info@ipinetwork.com or clicking the Contact Us button.   PREREQUISITES An applicant must be an IPI Certified Innovation Green Belt®.   COURSES TO BE COMPLETED Creating a winning organizational strategy. Failure prevention. Competitive patent analysis (patent circumvention and patent protection against circumvention).   PROJECTS TO BE CONDUCTED Application of GTI to a business issue facing an organization. Failure Prevention (or Cost Reduction, or Quality Improvement, or Performance Improvement). Competitive Patent Analysis (Patent Circumvention or Patent Protection against Circumvention).   COMMENTS AND CLARIFICATIONS Courses must be taught by an Authorized Certification Provider. A complete list of the Authorized Certification Providers can be found here. For a project that is a part of the certification process, a system constituting the project foundation could be a product (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.). A project on "Application of GTI to a business issue facing an organization" must address any of the business concerns related to an enterprise. The project tspecific opic could be "Improving Competitive Position of a Company", or "Avoiding Commodotization of a Product / Service", or "Creating a Winning Strategy for an Organization", etc. For the second project, any of the following topics (namely, Failure Prevention; Cost Reduction; Quality Improvement; Performance Improvement) is acceptable as the project objective. Only one objective/project is required. For a project on Competitive Patent Analysis, a patent (a group of patents) must be either circumvented or protected against circumvention.