Design Thinking to Drive Innovation

Program Content

Do you know your customers’ needs? Design thinking is a creative method to catalyze positive change through stronger, more creative leadership and innovation. Think about it. Form ideas. Experiment until you find the perfect solution.

Design Thinking to Drive Innovation will help you answer a fundamental business question: how can I determine my customers' needs and meet them? Rigorous experimentation is utilized to sift through the many possible solutions that are produced by rapid ideation. Following the prototyping process, the best ideas are combined to generate an execution-ready product or service. As business leaders are tasked more and more with improving the customer experience, initiating this kind of change momentum is more important than ever.

Through this program, you will learn how to generate ideas to create new market opportunities, develop solutions that capitalize on those opportunities, implement solutions, and lead your organization through innovative change.

What You Learn

Empathy

• Understand the needs and perspectives of your customers, employees, and other stakeholders.
• Find strategies for active listening, observation, and imagining diverse viewpoints to gain a deeper appreciation of your stakeholders' challenges and aspirations.

Creativity

• Generate and evaluate a wide range of ideas in collaboration with a team.
• Encourage brainstorming, avoid premature judgment, and practice taking risks and exploring unconventional solutions.

Prototyping

• Create and test prototypes of your solutions to refine them and gather feedback from users.
• Build low-fidelity models such as sketches, wireframes, or mock-ups, and high-fidelity prototypes, such as functional prototypes or simulations.

Iteration

• Get comfortable with an iterative process of testing, learning, and refining solutions based on feedback from users.
• Learn how and when to pivot or change course if the data or insights suggest that the current approach is not working.

Systems Thinking and Collaboration

• Understand how solutions fit within the broader context of your organization, industry, and society.
• Consider the interdependencies, trade-offs, and unintended consequences of your decisions and gauge the importance of seeking holistic, sustainable solutions.
• Work effectively with diverse teams and stakeholders, including designers, engineers, marketers, and customers.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, respect, and open communication, and create a safe space for feedback and constructive criticism.

Visualization

• Communicate ideas and solutions effectively through visual and verbal means. Use storytelling, sketches, diagrams, and other visualization tools to convey your vision, create a shared understanding, and inspire others to take action.
• Prepare your organization, business unit, department, or team for design thinking success.