Milan has a gritty density about it that I love. The grain of the City mixes old and new. It doesn’t try to be Florence or Rome – it is about business. Tourists even seem to fade into the background and are less irritating that usual (ie fewer tour groups).
I made the trip out to the new campus of the Politecnico di Milano on the underground and train. In the case of Bocconi, I was able to walk from our very central (block from Duomo) hotel. I hadn’t looked up Bocconi recently on the web so I wasn’t prepared for what awaited me at 8 Via Bocconi.
View of the Bocconi B-School
The campus is quite large and I met Davide Ravesi in the newest building on campus — built in 2008. I asked what it was like to work in — not great. Apparently one of his colleagues refers to it as a “Bronx Garage”.
Davide has been at Bocconi, as he said “ for a long time” – even though he doesn’t look that old. The drill used to be that you did your undergrad, masters, and Ph.D. at Bocconi and then you could be hired on as a professor. Davide says that has recently changed and they aren’t hiring their own much any more.
There are 12,000 students at Bocconi in Economics, Management and Law. 80% are in Management so it is a BIG business school. It is a relatively stable business model as 85% of the revenues are in student fees. Executive Education dipped slightly in the past year or so, but mostly everything else is business as usual. They have 30 Masters programs with a particular niche in the fashion and furniture industries.
So the design side is very much design as “noun” in the sense of preparing business students for work in the fashion industry and furniture industry in managerial roles. So there are courses in product design and design management.
Davide teaches a Management of Design course at the M.Sc. level to an average class size of 60-70 students. The content is around organization of design systems, best practices, connecting to business and design consultancies and learning to work with designers. There is also an emphasis on selling design, retailing and branding.
Davide wasn’t convinced that design thinking has much depth as yet in the business environment. He is more interested in design practice and how to approach problems. He asked the question: How do we bridge the gap between business and designers in terms of markets, consumers, sales & analysis— and — society, spatial sensibility and visual/aesthetics.
He said: Design in Italy is about art. He uses a 3minute Philippe Starck video on chair design http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNNV3xP60VI&feature=related and the IDEO shopping cart video (link to short version) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM as examples of different ways of approaching design.
In terms of pedagogy there seems to be a mix of management cases, field assignments and guests.
Finally, Davide commented that at Bocconi, teaching matters a lot. There are also strong research expectations — but the sense is that teaching (and the research that is brought to teaching) influences economic development. Which in these times is key.