08 February 2021
5 weeks, online
4-6 hours/week
08 February 2021
5 weeks, online
4-6 hours/week
Design is a transformational force that helps organisations develop products, services and experiences that resonate with customers. To be an innovator and gain a competitive advantage, you need to fully develop your design and creative thinking skills, both of which have become essential in today’s business environment.
(source: Design Management Institute)
In the INSEAD Design Thinking and Creativity for Business programme, you will receive feedback from a learning coach, who will help you navigate an experiential project related to your professional context.
Whether you are hoping to incorporate innovation in product or service development or simply want to hone your creativity and problem-solving skills, Design Thinking and Creativity for Business offers lessons that successful leaders can employ to drive improvements and advancements.
INSEAD delivers a programme that helps you transform your mindset and to think creatively like a designer with the strategic capabilities of a businessperson. The interactive online environment is ideal for working professionals like you who want to immediately apply what you are learning to your work. Infused with experiential learning opportunities, Design Thinking and Creativity for Business features design coaches who are practitioners with ample training and experience in sparking innovation through industrial design.
Understand problems from a human perspective, which is critical to finding meaningful purpose behind any innovation. Learn new ways to uncover insights behind unmet customer needs.
Find out why searching for novelty and usefulness is the essence of creativity. Unpack the creativity phenomenon and learn strategies to enable creative ideas.
Learn the benefits of an agile approach to innovation–test ideas often, learn quickly and apply learnings—to achieve a desirable product faster.
Learn the key managerial levers to spawn a creative culture.
Facilitate transformation in your organisation by using structured methods for achieving a more innovation-driven culture.
To manage creativity most effectively, you need to put design thinking into action. The Action Learning Project (ALP) is a way to apply what you’re learning in real-time to your organisation. The ALP will take you on a step-by-step journey in which you will identify a non-trivial, yet manageable innovation opportunity, which can serve as a realistic platform to put key concepts into practice. The ALP is a personalised experience, with design coaches guiding you and providing you feedback using a design-based approach throughout the process. You will learn how to manage the design-business interface in any innovation effort.
Agree on the scope of your ALP with the learning coach to ensure you’re meeting the learning objectives and will have a concrete end goal.
The ALP is a programme-long project, meaning you will apply the tools and concepts learned as they are taught each week.
At the end of each week, you will provide concrete strategic recommendations for your organisation. In the final week, every participant will review two to four other submissions and provide peer feedback.
Over the course of five weeks, you will learn how to maximise your design and creative thinking to innovate and come up with solutions to challenging business problems.
Identify a concrete area to apply design thinking principles into practice that is visible by key stakeholders, yet non-trivial and actionable in a 5-week timeframe.
Determine who the key stakeholders are in your innovation area and decide what matters to those stakeholders.
Identify how the new creative strategies learned in the programme help you develop solutions to address your innovation opportunities.
Determine assumptions and risks associated with developing your innovative solutions and understand how you can test your solutions in an ‘agile’ way.
Answer the question, “What resources, processes and values would need to be changed in your organisation to arrive at your innovative outcome?”
To learn more details about each module
Download Syllabus
In the context of the banal PC market in 1998 and Apple just barely breaking even, what were the pros and cons for deciding whether to open branded retail stores?
What is the upside potential of bringing creative thinking into the traditionally staid banking industry – market share, customer loyalty, profit margins?
How did Belkin use empathic design techniques to move from an unknown entity to become one of the best-known brands for consumer electronics accessories?
How might you leverage user-centric insights and agile iteration in assessing whether IDEO, the most influential product development firm in the world, is an appropriate fit for a hospital system seeking to improve healthcare services?
How would you evaluate the idea of bringing design services in-house at management consulting firm, McKinsey, and what are the main factors that lead to success or failure?
What problems arose when the Singapore Ministry of Manpower (MOM) decided to design the processes for issuing employment permits for foreign workers in the same fashion, regardless of whether one was an unskilled labourer or a highly skilled professional?
Professor Sosa worked with the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California to create this programme to integrate business and design disciplines for successful product development. He teaches in the MBA, PhD and Executive Education programmes covering topics related to innovation...
Read moreUpon successful completion of the programme activities, combined with satisfactory grades on the final assignment, you are awarded an official digital Certificate of Completion from INSEAD, which you can showcase on your LinkedIn profile. The top performers receive a Certificate with Distinction.
Note: After successful completion of the programme, your verified digital certificate will be emailed to you in the name you used when registering for the programme. All certificate images are for illustrative purposes only and may be subject to change at the discretion of INSEAD.
The programme should take approximately 4-6 hours per week. You can expect to devote 1-2 hours per week watching video lectures on fundamental concepts, 1 hour per week on interacting with fellow participants in discussions or reflecting on the concepts through quizzes and reflections and 2-3 hours per week in applying the fundamental concepts in an action learning project to understand their relevance to your everyday work.
The programme is designed in a manner to encourage the whole class to learn together, moving at a certain pace from week to week, while providing enough flexibility within each week for the participants to review the content at their own convenience. While a week is open, you can login any time at your convenience and review the weekly content at your own pace, as the learning design is asynchronous.
The Design Coaches may or may not have expertise in a specific industry. Their role is to offer you a designer’s perspective on your project and share insights from a design point of view. In contrast to learning coaches who provide detailed feedback on your ALP from a business and leadership perspective, the design coaches won’t necessarily provide feedback on these aspects but instead focus primarily on the design and creativity side of things. This programme focuses more on the design and creativity aspects of innovation and hence leverages the expertise from Design Coaches.
Yes, of course. We purposefully limit class sizes to ensure ample faculty-to-participant time. At a minimum, participants can expect at least one live call with the faculty to discuss course content. In addition, the faculty would be reading your thoughts in the discussion forums in the platform from time to time and answer your questions through periodic just-in-time recorded videos. The Faculty would be further assisted in these interactions by the learning coach, acting as a bridge between the participants and the faculty.
Yes, of course. The learning experience is designed to encourage interaction. Participants are able to interact with each other through discussion forums, interspersed throughout the platform. In addition, participants would have the option to work on the action-learning project in groups with fellow participants. They would also have the opportunity to interact with each other during the live call with faculty.
Our online programmes, like our face-to-face programmes, follow a rigorous learning process. Participants are expected to fulfil a certain minimum criteria to earn the certificate of completion.
Upon successfully completing all the programme requirements in time, you will receive an official Certificate of Completion from INSEAD, which you can also share with your network on LinkedIn. The top performers will receive a Certificate with Distinction.
Absolutely, and we actually encourage participants to attend in teams in order to maximise the learning and impact. We also offer a special fee for groups of executives attending from the same organisation, so please feel free to contact us for more details.
Professor Sosa worked with the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California to create this programme to integrate business and design disciplines for successful product development. He teaches in the MBA, PhD and Executive Education programmes covering topics related to innovation and operations management. His research is focused on improving product development systems. He is particularly interested in studying coordination and innovation networks in complex product and software development organisations. Professor Sosa previously worked in systems engineering in the petrochemical industry and in the development and deployment of computer-aided engineering software applications. He received a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Universidad Simón Bolívar (Caracas, Venezuela) and an SM and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).