Stanford Certificate Program
The Strategic Decision and Risk Management certificate program, a partnership of the Stanford Center for Professional Development and SDG, empowers industry professionals to make quality decisions and embrace risk and uncertainty for competitive advantage. Participants can choose a series of courses that benefit their career paths or organizations.
Strategic Decision and Risk Management
The curriculum comprises 13 short courses, each 2½ days, combining Stanford University's academic and research depth with the decision and risk management expertise of SDG. Participants have the flexibility of taking individual courses or earning a certificate by completing two core courses and four electives. The program may be completed online.
Select a course title below to read a longer description and view available dates. Most courses are available online; all are available as a custom, on-site program.
- Decision Quality
- Explore the processes and tools necessary to assist people and organizations in decision-making in this 2½-day course.
- Decision Analysis
- This 2½-day course explores the philosophy and tools of decision analysis, the analytic foundation for Stanford's Strategic Decision and Risk Management program, and is instructed by Dr. Ronald Howard, a founder of the decision analysis discipline.
- Biases in Decision Making
- In this 2½-day course (previously Behavioral Challenges in Decision Making), we introduce a framework for understanding how natural behavioral tendencies can produce biases, distortions, and mistakes in decision-making.
- Collaborative Decision-Making and Negotiation
- Explore decisions made in competition (game theory) and collaboration (negotiation) in this new course.
- Leading Strategic Decision-Making
- This 2½-day course (formerly Decision Leadership) builds on the concepts of Decision Quality and the Dialogue Decision Process, with a focus on the role of those who lead the decision process.
- Modeling for Strategic Insight
- This 2½-day course develops skills needed to build useful models in strategic decision situations and harnesses those skills to draw powerful insights.
- Strategic Innovation and Design Thinking
- This 2½-day course gives participants experience in "design thinking" and a new set of tools to find and develop innovative alternatives for addressing strategic business problems.
- Strategic Portfolio Decisions
- Work through a case exercise in this 2½-day course to learn and apply the powerful tools that comprise the Strategic Portfolio Management Process.
- Enterprise Risk Management
- In this 2½-day course, examine ways to identify excessive risk exposure, manage enterprise risk, and delineate clear roles for the board, senior executives, chief risk officers, line executives, and risk management staff.
- Decision Quality Practicum
- Work in a small team on a complex decision problem from start to finish in this 2½-day course.
- Converting Strategy into Action
- This 2½-day introduction offers proven approaches and emerging concepts for aligning your organization's project and program initiatives with its strategic decisions.
- Advanced Decision Analysis
- Building on the core Decision Analysis course, explore the considerations and tools necessary to assist people and organizations in decision-making in this 2½-day course.
- Ethical Decision Making
- Master the art of ethical decision-making so you can respond skillfully to life's inevitable ethical challenges.
