- The find: An executive training program at Stanford claims executives can benefit from being taught to tinker like designers.
- The source: Work Matters, the blog of Bob Sutton, Stanford business school and author of “The No Asshole Rule” and other books.
The takeaway: First there was Harvard Business Review’s recent suggestion that rather than getting an MBA, managers might benefit from studying for a Master of Fine Arts, then our recent post citing findings that arts education can boost innovative thinking, now here’s Bob Sutton talking about a new training program for executives there — “Design Thinking Boot Camp: From Insights to Innovation.” The program claims that the human-centered, prototype-driven process of design advances managers’ ability to:
- Develop deep consumer insights: design’s field observations and ethnographic methods will take managers beyond the limitations of traditional market research
- Reduce risk and accelerate learning through rapid prototyping
- Drive towards innovation, not just incremental growth
- Empower your employees to be innovative: Design thinking can help transform your organizational structure and internal processes towards a more innovative stance
The question: Do programs like these bolster the argument that the MBA is indeed obsolete?
