Design Thinking for Market-Driven Innovation

Design Thinking for Market-Driven Innovation (BUSN 6293 from 2011-2013; ENTR 6293 from 2014-2016) was a course elective in both the Full-Time MBA Program: Entrepreneurship Track, and the Graduate Certificate in Innovation Management in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. This course was created and offered by Professor Anthony De Ritis, Professor of Music in the College of Arts, Media and Design. The course ran over a seven-week period during the the Summer 2 (July and August) period at Northeastern, and was offered from Summer 2, 2011 to Summer 2, 2016.

The mission of design thinking is to translate observation into insights, and insights into products and services that will improve lives…. [design thinking is] collaborative but in a way that amplifies, rather than subdues, the creative powers of individuals; [design thinking is] focused, but at the same time flexible and responsive to unexpected opportunities; focused not just on optimizing the social, the technical, and the business components of a product, but on bringing them into a harmonious balance.
— Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO and author, Change By Design

Course Objective

“Design Thinking” is a human-centered approach to innovation that uses principles of design within the practical constraints of business. According to Harvard Business Review, “businesses are realizing that the only way to differentiate their goods and services in today’s overstocked, materially abundant marketplace is to make their offerings transcendent – physically beautiful and emotionally compelling.”

BusinessWeek ran an article titled “Tomorrow’s B-School? It Might Be A D-School” stating that, “much of corporate America… has started thinking about thinking. And all that thinking has led many executives to the same conclusion: We need help thinking.” This course presents an approach on how to think collaboratively and creatively.

This course introduces and applies concepts of design thinking to the development of innovative new products and services. Tim Brown’s book, Change By Design is used as a starting point for this discussion. Lectures on topics of anthropology, ethnography, design, engineering, new media, cognitive psychology, music and business will provide us with multiple reference points to understand design thinking, including thoughts on human observation, narrative, storytelling, play, experimentation, iterative design, constraints, rapid prototyping, and more.

This course will consist of three parts:

  1. What is Design Thinking?
  2. Team Projects
  3. Process Books and Final Presentations

Part 1 will combine theory and practice. We will initiate our understanding of Design Thinking from the IDEO perspective, then expand and challenge these perspectives via discussions from our own personal experiences and the viewpoints presented by guest lecturers. This course has a series of applied, in-class exercises.

For Part 2, we establish interdisciplinary teams of 4 to 6 persons; each team will select a product and/or service with which to apply the process of design thinking. It is hoped that students will be able to bring relevant project ideas from their current employment, such that the final deliverable (Part 3) will not only be meaningful to their understanding of design thinking, but may also bring significant value to your current employers.

Part 3 is the final deliverable of the class, a final report or “process book”, and a final presentation. A faculty review panel will be invited to attend and critique your final presentations.

Topics to be covered in this class include:

Introduction and Overview
  • Design Thinking – An approach to innovation
  • Methods of communication and collaboration
What is Design Thinking?
  • Three spaces of innovation: Inspiration, Ideation, Implementation
  • Interdisciplinary Teams / McKinsey’s “T-shaped” Philosophy
  • Human-centered Design
  • Design Principles / Iterative Design
  • Experimentation / Play / Embrace Constraints
  • The Project
  • Cultures of Innovation
  • Real Space vs. Virtual Space / Project Rooms
Inspiration and “Pre-Production”
  • Latent needs
  • Insight, Observation, Empathy
  • Extreme Users / Field Research
Ideation and Process
  • Convergent and Divergent Thinking
  • Analysis and Synthesis
  • Raw Material / Narrative
  • Data Gathering
  • Experimentation
  • Brainstorming / Visual Thinking
  • The “Butterfly Test” – methods of spotting patterns within a mess of complex inputs
Implementation
  • Rapid prototyping
  • Storyboarding
  • Customer Journey / Improvisation
  • Passive to Active Consumption/Participation
  • Empathy – Functional to Emotional
  • Planning all aspects of Human Interaction
  • Testing
Storytelling
  • Communicating the value of an idea