New Course Offering with Art Center College of Design

The Drucker School of Management, in collaboration with Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, has introduced a new course offering in Spring 2011 taught by Drucker School Academic Dean and Professor of Management Hideki Yamawaki: MGT 341, Creating New Competitive Advantage through Design Thinking.

To innovate more effectively in tomorrow’s markets many corporations are finding value in employing methods that designers typically use in their approach to solving problems. The course combines classroom and design projects to expose students to a new working environment of design-driven companies.

Working on design projects with Art Center design students, Drucker students are expected to learn new ways in which to combine creativity, managerial skills and entrepreneurial spirit in holistic ways. In particular, management students will have the opportunity to work with the designer’s approach – a deep understanding of the user/client, creative solutions to constraints and tensions, prototyping, and continuous modifications.

Throughout the course, students are assigned to work in teams comprised of Drucker students and Art Center Graduate Industrial Design students and faculty. Each team will work on researching and then formulating a business model based proposal that includes a strategy to bring the offering to market. All three teams will take on the same challenge and produce competitive proposals presented on the final week of the course.

The course meets weekly for 7 weeks, alternating between the Drucker School and Art Center campuses.