Can someone explain what Design MBA is? HYPE or a framework for Innovation?

If you are looking beyond traditional MBAs, you might have come across the term – “Design MBA”. There are hundreds of articles on design thinking and strategy. From an MBA’s point of view, it is important to understand Design Thinking

Design Thinking

Although this terminology was coined to understand how inventors, entrepreneurs, and designers utilized creativity in products and services, change processes, enhance business process efficiency and approach risk taking in a strategic context, the terminology has often been lost in intellectual discussions.

What actually is design thinking?

There are two kinds of Businesses. Apple falls under the first category: a Business that educates the market about the importance of design in every interaction. It also incorporates the best practices of simplistic design and intuitive interaction in its products. Apple has found a market that is ready to pay a premium for its design focus. The second one like Barclays, accepted the idea for the first ATM machine from John Shepherd-Barron, and introduced the machine as a mean to increase efficiency in Banking services. Both the companies had one goal - convenience.

DESIGN THINKING = CONVENIENCE

Edison invented the light bulb as a convenient way of lighting the home. The elements of creativity in the design of filaments were not at the cost of the product. This explains why the market place saw the adoption of three elements (carbon, tantalum & osmium) before the introduction of tungsten. Initially tungsten was not available in its wire form. William D. Coolidge developed processes and added treatments of Potassium, Silicon, and Aluminum Oxides to increase the life of a filament. The implementation of filament for light bulb was secondary. Design thinkers in the early 20th century envisioned a world that was completely different from what the people was used to. This approach of thinking about the solution first and then framing the problem is the foundation of Design thinking.

Can such innovation and design thinking be taught in an MBA?

If we list the behaviors and processes that the inventors, entrepreneurs and designers have adopted, there are some common pattern. All of them:

a) Have an innate sense of what people want
b) Have a futuristic view on what the world would be
c) Have the ability to frame problems based on the futuristic solution

The need for Design thinking in an MBA is based on the assumption that most of the traditional MBAs pick students who are strong analytically and there are few GMAT questions that focus on creativity. When the entry criteria in top Business Schools are based on GMAT Score and GPA, and the current undergraduate and school level education focus very little on creativity, Design MBAs has found favor among aspirants who understand that future Businesses will have to adopt Design thinking for innovation and the demand for MBAs with such background will increase.  

A Design MBA will not only give the students the skills for number crunching and data driven decision making, but the focus on design thinking will allow students to take up design leadership roles with a clear understanding on how to integrate C-Suite and D-Suite departments.

What is Design Strategy?

Although the foundation of Design Strategy is design thinking, the discipline also looks at strategic decision making, over the long-term. It teaches how CEOs and other key decision making personnel can integrate Business strategy with design decisions. An example in recent history is the introduction of ipod and iTunes Music store. The first ipod was introduced in the market in October 2001. Once the ipod received mass adoption, Apple introduced iTunes Music store in April 2003. Apple had envisioned an online music store much before the ipod. But to avoid illegal downloads, the team at apple integrated the mp3 download facility in ipod with iTunes. Once the negotiation with music labels concluded the iTunes music store began hosting millions of mp3. So did ipod change the behavior of users from illegally downloading mp3s to buying mp3 for 99c? It certainly did. The design of the product, in this case ipod, changed the mass behavior.