Innovation by Design Thinking

This course is an immersive experience into Design Thinking - an empathy-based, human-centered, and rapid prototype-driven methodology for innovation. Design Thinking helps to tackle challenges such as the creation of new products, technological innovation, services, business models, experiences, processes and/or systems. The primary aim of the course is to empower students to ideate, launch, run, and successfully complete innovation projects that have a significant and meaningful impact on pioneering organizations and industries. The course encompasses intensive sessions on need finding, empathy, observation, immersion, ethnographic research, brain-/body-storming, ideation, and rapid prototyping - all in the context of tackling cutting-edge technological challenges and addressing strategic industry objectives.

For further information, http://www.pracademy.co/tmm4220. Our primary source of communication will be the course website. We will not be using CANVAS. For individual communication, we will use email.

Teaching in this course will not start before week 36.

Knowledge: The students know how to approach innovation challenges from a human-centered perspective. They understand that the best innovations are usually the ones that address deep human needs, which point to meaning and the human experience. They acknowledge that a multidisciplinary approach to innovation is a powerful way to incorporate the perspectives of many different kinds of people, and that diversity is key to the development of continuous, and radical innovations. The students also uncover the importance of approaching innovation projects with a prototyping mind set, where iterations, trial and error, and even failure are all part of a valuable, creative learning process.

Skills:

• The students are able to empathize with a broad group of stakeholders to understand their needs through the ethnographic method.
• The students are able to define and re-define innovation challenges by asking the right questions, and not necessarily focusing on the right answers.
• The students are able to develop many creative ideas through structured brainstorming sessions.
• The students are able to develop rapid prototypes to bring their ideas into reality as quickly as possible, and obtain feedback.

General competence: The students, more broadly, gain a greater acceptance towards dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty in their professional and personal lives. They also learn to work with many different people in fast-paced, dynamic, cross-disciplinary team settings. Students also gain the competence to approach many different problems and challenges with an open, creative, empathetic, and prototype-driven mind set.

We will employ the latest project- and problem-based learning pedagogies, involving real-life challenges, storytelling/storydoing, soft prototyping, and iterative methods. With regards to the evaluation, we will focus significantly on the design-thinking process, the insights learned, and the skills developed during the educational journey. The quality and applicability of the final prototypes will not be our sole focus.

The students will be evaluated on the design-driven, knowledge portfolio which is developed throughout the course (compulsory exercises), and a team-based essay handed in at the end of the course.