Today I had the pleasure of meeting 20 new business design thinkers. How great is that. Ron, Miguel and I launched the B.Com Sauder D-Studio. We are making believe that we are in a wonderful studio space — unfortunately we aren’t. We are in what is called “swing space” until the Henry Angus renovations are complete. But it is amazing what you can imagine when energetic students are around.
We did the usual introductions and then talked about design thinking. I test-drove my latest elevator pitch about what design thinking is — how to describe it in plain language.
And I asked our students to think about the kind of language that they might use as business students to explain design thinking. Am hoping for a great tag line…
Adapted from design and tailored to enterprise, design thinking embeds a human-centred, collaborative, integrative, disciplined and creative process for seeing problems and framing opportunities in the everyday tool kit of leaders in business and government.
We tried to move it along so that we quickly got to actually “doing” something — which is of course what studios are about. The assignment was called Business in a Back Pack…A business and design thinking ‘improv’ exercise about you, your wits and what you have with you today.
The challenge: Business opportunity is potentially everywhere and anywhere. Two clever, creative business students ought to be able to find (or invent) some using only their collective knowledge, wits and the resources they can find in their pockets, backpacks, messenger bags, briefcases, or purses . . . And use the opportunity to tell us who you are and how you think.
Our students stepped up to the challenge and ‘rapid prototyped’ their business concept — after a 30 minute blitz we heard about Picture Music (use your imagination), Tourism in a Back Pack, Daily Survival Kit, The Snack Pack to Go, Imagination on Foot (you had to be there), The Vending Fountain, the Tech Pack, and the Solution Geo Compass (I hope I got that right).
Here they are in action.
Bodes well for having fun with lots of learning in the d-Studio.