| Business Week: Get Creative! |
| IDEO's David Kelley is building a "D-school" that aims to put students in direct contact with the people they're designing for |
Kelley is at the center of a small group working to formalize this design thinking to teach it in school -- and in corporations. He recently talked to BusinessWeek design guru Bruce Nussbaum. Here are excerpts:
Q: The business community is desperately seeking to learn how to be innovative today. Where should they go to learn how to be more creative?
A: It's not exactly where they go, but that they realize they're going to have to change their behavior -- they need to get involved. We don't have great success until designers actually commit to getting involved physically. Go out and hang with users, visit people that they wouldn't have normally visited. It's about physically going out there.
Q: Where do they learn to do that?
A: There are plenty of books. Jane Fulton Suri's Thoughtless Acts is really starting to take off. People are really trying to get their minds around this kind of human-centered approach to life. But in addition to reading the latest stuff, managers really need to get out there in the early phases of design. Go out and visit somebody in your marketplace.
Q: Are any B schools teaching this?
A: There's Roger Martin [dean of the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto], and I think the London School of Business is good and Northwestern University. But it's so new.
Q: What about at your D-school?
A: Of course, at the D-school we're changing from a more conventional kind of design school to a school that actually takes companies out there, takes students out there, and makes them follow somebody for a day and observe. They need the visceral feel of the user experience rather than just sitting in their cubicle at their computer.
Filed Under: Leans Academic
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