Lessons from AmericaReport on the Design Council / HEFCE fact-finding visit to the United StatesSeptember 2006

1.IntroductionThe Cox Review of Creativity in Business, published in late 2005, identified the need for the UK to exploit its creative capabilities more fully in order to respond to the growing competitive threat from rapidly emerging economies.

As part of the process to develop and implement the review’s recommendations, a delegation of academics, officials and policy makers visited universities and design firms in California, Illinois and Massachusetts.

The review put forward several recommendations promoting multi-disciplinarity in higher education as a driver of innovation. These included better preparing students ‘to work with, and understand other specialists’, and ‘the establishment of centres of excellence for multi-disciplinary courses that combine management studies, engineering and technology with design and the creative arts’.

The purpose of the visit to the US was to find examples of design-related multi-disciplinary education and practice, and assess their relevance and adaptability to a UK context. This report brings together some of the key insights that were gained from the visits.

Summary of key points:

To prepare future generations of creative specialists and business leaders we need:

- To develop different types of creative professionals - specialist designers and design managers, as well as design thinkers, who come from design and other subject areas, and can operate across disciplines

- Stronger collaboration with, and involvement of, industry and public sector organisations in education

- Development of cross-disciplinary opportunities in universities, especially at postgraduate level, and simplification of credit systems to encourage greater levels of collaboration

- lnnovative education models that integrate research, teaching and live project work

- To promote multi-disciplinary teamwork, involving business, design, science and engineering students, and to include new disciplines within design teams working in the area of innovation, especially the social and life sciences, and humanities (eg, anthropology, psychology and the creative arts)

- More creative spaces - physical environments and resources for prototyping, brainstorming, project development and creative teamwork.

2. Design thinking, skills and methods for innovation

2.1 Design thinking

The recurring use of the term ‘design thinking’ was a subject of some debate about the extent to which it signalled an extension of traditional design skills or a departure into a new discipline. The term was generally used to describe the use of design processes and methods which included the questioning of briefs, making early speculative proposals and developing iterative prototypes to foster innovation and contribute to business growth. It was widely seen as a management tool that enables the development of a creative business culture, generating new business models as well as customer focused products and services. The application of design thinking to public sector organisations and in tackling big issues and problems is equally effective, resulting in creative solutions and outcomes.

Design thinking is associated with the ability to integrate analytical thinking with the practicality of ‘mocking things up’ and trying them out. While this is not a particularly new approach within design, it seems to be the subject of renewed appreciation and increased demand from mainstream business and it can, to an extent, be used by different professions.Staff at Illinois Institute of Technology’s Stuart School of Business spoke of the school’s desire to differentiate its MBA programme from others (reference was made to the homogenous ‘plain vanilla’ MBAs that are prevalent in the US) by linking up with the prestigious Institute of Design at IIT. The goal is to construct an MBA that specialises in innovation and embeds design methods and thinking within the core curriculum.

‘We set out to solve problems as a holistic type of management consultancy would’Tim Brown, IDEO

‘Lots of people can employ design thinking - not just designers’ Tim Brown, IDEO

‘The B-School should become the D-School … A new breed of MBA graduates is emerging through the development of creative, innovative business leaders’ Harvey Kahalas, Stuart School of Management , IIT

2.2 Specialists and hybrids

Design thinking was associated with the ability to integrate specialist knowledge of one or two areas with a broad understanding and curiosity about other areas. This skill is embodied in IDEO’s T-shaped model, in which ‘vertical’ specialist depth, developed mainly through undergraduate qualifications, is complemented by the ‘horizontal’ appreciation and understanding of other disciplines and professional contexts, often developed in postgraduate degrees and early career experience.

Design consultancies like IDEO, Jump and Herbst Lazar Bell (HLB) all claim they are seeking these T-shaped individuals. While some place a higher degree of emphasis on specialist capabilities and a ‘curiosity’ about other fields, others look for the ‘hybrids’ able to fully transcend several fields of discourse and practice, and work in innovative ways.

Stanford d-school is based on the principle of developing the T-shape by adding breadth to the specialist depth, and students on the courses are selected with that potential in mind.

Countering this trend, some argued for preserving design’s ‘purity’ and concentrating on raising the levels of the ‘craft of designing’ within a manufacturing context. This was especially apparent in businesses, such as Apple, where functionality and the aesthetic of the product were paramount. In several instances, the UK design education system was commended for producing internationally renowned, brilliant designers through the nurturing of such ‘pure’ design skills.

‘We want….specialists with a passion and empathy for people and for other subject areas’ Tim Brown, IDEO

‘We need more cross-over people’ Walter

Herbst, HLB‘We need deeply capable design practitioners in all fields and more creative design thinkers that can contribute to business and society at a much broader level. I believe that an effective education and development system should be capable of providing both. You should not necessarily expect both from the same institutions, however’ Tim Brown, IDEO

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2.3 Innovation methods and creative processes

Many of the programmes visited presented themselves as providing both designers and managers with skills and methods for managing innovation. The Illinois Institute of Design is particularly strong in its resolve to ‘demystify’ and ‘de-exoticise’ design, and bring it into mainstream business practice. Bringing together engineers, marketeers and designers to solve business problems, the Institute emphasises processes and methods that students from different backgrounds can relate to. In most programmes design methods are applied to a wide range of contexts, from product and service development to organisations and systems.

Various methods for generating and selecting ideas have been developed as core elements of these courses. New emphasis is being placed on ethnographic methods for conducting user and market research. While some of these methods are transferable and can be taught to senior business managers, concerns were raised about the danger of trivialising specialist design skills and methods.

‘A key issue in the failure of design to add real value is that the wrong briefs are being tackled’Tim Brown, IDEO

‘Design is not important. Good design is important’Jonathan Ive, Apple

Patrick Whitney, IIT Institute of Design

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3. Developing innovative practice3.1 Multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary teamwork

There was widespread acknowledgement of the importance of multi-disciplinary teamwork, especially at postgraduate level. Multi-disciplinary teams develop individual and collective decision making and an understanding and appreciation of other disciplines: The Stanford d-school draws students from across different faculties to collaborate on extra-curricular, design process-led projects. Faculty emphasised the way discourse and dialogue between different disciplinary specialists are balanced by practical experience of ‘doing’.

MIT’s MediaLab draws on the diversity of methods and approaches of teams of engineers, artists, architects and scientists, who collaborate on future-focused research projects, emphasising the benefit of a multi-disciplinary mix to achieve radical innovation and underlining that a lot of the most interesting challenges don’t fall neatly into existing disciplines.

At both Stanford d-school and MIT, project teams usually comprise students from engineering (mechanical, electrical or software), business (marketing and management), design (product and communications) and anthropology, with ethnographic research repeatedly cited as a key component of new product development.

The sizes of teams varied; the d-school regarded 3-4 as the ideal number of team members and supported this with research conducted at Microsoft; In MIT’s joint masters programme, with students from engineering, management and design (from the Rhode Island School of Design), team sizes were as large as 6-7. The common perception was that three-person teams are best.

‘Innovation is a team process, not an individual one. There is no room for ego…if I see anyone signing their name on a project I’ll break their fingers’Walter

Herbst,

Northwester

n University‘Three is the ideal number for a project team, four is okay, five is death’George

Kembel,

Stanford d-

school

‘Creativity is about group activity and provocation’ Bill Mitchell,

MIT

MediaLab

Stanford d-school uses psychological profiling to construct teams, and counselling maintains health team dynamics during in during the projects. IDEO also pays considerable attention to putting together the right teams of people from its international ernational pool for each project.

Multi-disciplinary team-based project work is characterised by flat hierarchies and teams of ‘like-minded’ people; faculty staff Faculty staff are seen as team collaborators or leaders, and subjected to critiques from other staff and students.

Stanford d-school focuses on fostering radical collaborations as a means of tackling complex issues. The school offers its fers ffers it´s programme as an extra-curricular option, awarding kudos rather than credits. Dual degrees are another popular route pular route and there were several examples of degrees of this type, such as IIT’s dual programme of an MBA and Master of Master of Design Methods.1

In some cases, the low disciplinary boundaries in some of the multi-disciplinary centres visited were said to have an alienating effect on links with the rest of the university, where disciplinary boundaries were more rigid.

‘It’s not our job to make ‘em, it’s our job to let ‘em’George Kembel, Stanford d-school

‘Good design is not good enough any more’Mark Dziersk, HLB

d-school ‘napkin’ manifesto

Temporary home of the Hasso Platner Institute of Design at Stanford University: the ‘d-school’

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3.2 Collaboration across subjects

There were many examples of cross-faculty and inter-departmental links that instigated and underpinned many of the multi-disciplinary programmes. An obvious example was Northwestern’s MPD and MMM programmes2 which are delivered by faculty from the McCormick School of Engineering and the Kellogg Business School. These programmes cover more than 23 subjects over two years, with intensive classes geared to students’ needs, such as ‘Turbo Finance’ - a five week class on finance in business.

The crossover of faculty between different institutions was noted for its impressive fluidity; several faculty members were in full-time posts in one institution while acting as part-time or visiting lecturers in neighbouring institutions, departments or faculties. Similarly, joint research projects between faculty from different departments and disciplines were common.

In the joint programme between MIT’s engineering and business schools, all students attend a placement in a company where each is supervised by a pair of tutors – one from each school. This was said to foster strong relationships between the two departments.

The importance of a bottom-up approach in encouraging collaborations across departments and between universities was raised in the context of MIT’s engineering systems division. Here, an attempt to set up academic links with Portugal was seen to be more successful than a similar venture with Cambridge UK because it was founded on existing relationships between the two institutions, rather than being the result of a government diktat to establish a link, as was the case with the Cambridge-MIT initiative.

‘Most designers can’t read a balance sheet, but companies base decisions on balance sheets’Patrick Whitney, Institute of Design, IIT

Ford Engineering Design Center, Northwestern University

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3.3 Culture of prototyping

‘We need designers who can surf the waves of technological innovation; product designers need technological depth’Bill Mitchell, MIT

MediaLab

All the academic programmes we visited championed a project-based teaching approach and highlighted the importance of complementing theoretical studies with real-world solution seeking embedded (incrustar) in a culture of prototyping. This type of culture involves a continuously iterative, solution focused approach that embeds

(incrusta) testing throughout the development process (rather than at the end of it).

MIT MediaLab projects begin by generating solutions with no prior data, prototyping concepts right at the start of a project, followed by user testing. Project teams at Stanford d-school commonly produce 8 – 10 prototypes for each concept.

All the businesses also placed huge emphasis on the need for prototyping with space and facilities for a wide range of products, including mocking-up spaces in which the products being tested are typically used.The combination of ‘right’ and ‘left brain’ activities, and theoretical and experiential learning was emphasised in several programmes. At Northwestern’s Masters of Product Development course, each day’s schedule includes activities and classes that combine different cognitive approaches relating to right and left brain thinking.

Larry Leifer, Stanford d-school

Bill Mitchell, MIT MediaLab

‘We are developing future innovators – breakthrough thinkers and doers’ Larry Leifer, Stanford d-school8

3.4 Physical Spaces

The impact of the physical environment in stimulating and facilitating innovation was a recurring theme. During the visits, design consultancies Jump and IDEO highlighted the importance of flexible spaces and task/mood-specific spaces for generating particular types of interactions. For example, designers at Jump noted how important the central stairway was for generating accidental encounters, and how a particular area of the office which had been converted into ‘diner style’ booths was the most heavily used for small group meetings. They also cited the importance of their ‘neighbourhood’ spaces - open-plan spaces where people on different projects work closely together. Stanford’s studios contain flexible project spaces that are customised by each group and have a ‘neutral’ middle space that is shared by all teams.

The wide use of communal spaces that blur boundaries of work with social and semi-private activity was another recurring feature.

In the universities the existence of a physical ‘place’ that is ‘non-territorial’ in terms of faculty affiliation was seen as important in getting students and tutors from different faculties to collaborate on an equal footing.

Alonzo Canada, Jump Associates

MIT MediaLab

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4. Links with industry

4.1 Live projects, real world situations and internships

There was an acknowledgement of the importance of ‘constraints’ as agents of creativity, and exposing students to real-life situations and real financial and time constraints was generally seen as a key part of the structuring of projects. The d-school emphasises the importance of process; and even when projects were selected for ‘altruistic’ reasons, eg, ‘handling emergency aftermaths’, these had to be grounded in a process that reflected real-world constraints. Other programmes used enterprise modules and business plan competitions to allow students working in companies to take products to market as a means of gaining this crucial real-world experience. Jonathan Ive reiterated the importance of industrial designers having real knowledge and understanding of the industrial environment and bemoaned the difficulty in finding graduates with this knowledge.

Internships, placements or some sort of industry experience were common to all programmes, most of which were aimed at early to mid-career professionals who have some real-world experience and bring industry links into their studies.

‘Designers need to know how to bring something to market’ Jonathan Ive, Apple

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4.2 Corporate culture and education sponsorships (patrocinio)

University links with industry are very well developed, especially with large businesses. The scale of sponsorship for institutions is sometimes vast and relies on continuous relationship management between the universities and their corporate donors. Programme leaders are naturally attentive to the needs of industry sponsors and in some instances referred to them as their ‘client’, with their students referred to as their ‘product’. This attitude, which may be common in many business schools, is increasingly found in design schools.

The MIT MediaLab has an interesting sponsorship model: sponsoring companies donate in the range of $200K and are part of an industrial consortium that gains access to the IP that is generated and, more importantly perhaps, to the talent pool. In Europe however, this model proved less successful – possibly because of the lack of large corporate sponsors.

‘It is difficult to work with small companies; everyone is working flat out’George Kembel, Stanford d-schoolMIT MediaLab

‘Innovation comes from the connections, relationships and interaction between different clusters and companies’ Bill Mitchell, MIT MediaLab

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4.3 Regional dimensions

The strong industrial connections were reflected in the different ‘flavours’ of design and innovation that have evolved in each of the cities visited. Silicon Valley’s software industry supported the rapid growth of design consultancies, such as IDEO and Jump, that champion an ethos of design-as-way-of-thinking and an innovation model that is appropriate for rapidly evolving, mass producing industry; Chicago’s heritage as a site of heavier industrial production is reflected in the way design is not only well regarded within business and engineering faculties, but is in itself rationalised and ‘de-exoticised’, emphasising process and methods over attitude or personal expression; and with Boston’s strong heritage of science, technology and engineering, where design is perhaps seen as a peripheral, aesthetically driven activity, it is not surprising that the leading regional design school is in a neighbouring state.

These regional design and innovation eco-systems acknowledged their socio-economic environments and built on relationships with engineering, business and industry at large.12

The delegation members were- Alice Frost, Head of Business and Community Policy, HEFCE - Amy Farrington, Consultant, University of Liverpool - Aviv Katz, Design Skills Manager, Design Council - Clare Johnston, Head of Textiles, Royal College of Art - Graham Hitchen, Project Director for the National Centre for Design and Innovation at the Lon don Development Agency - James More, Dean, Faculty of Design, Northumbria University - James Moultrie, Lecturer in Design, Innovation and New Product Development, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge - John Miller, Director of Design, University College Falmouth - Ken Newton, Product Design Subject Area Leader, University of Teesside - Lesley Morris, Head of Design Skills, Design Council - Leslie Maruziva, Senior Manager, Production Industries, London Development Agency- Marc Ventresca, Lecturer in Management Studies, Said Business School, Oxford University- Martin Binks, Professor of Entrepreneurial Development, Director of Institute for Enterprise and Innovation, University of Nottingham - Mike Brogan, Preston City Architect - Nick Leon, Tanaka Business School, Imperial College - Penny Sparke, Pro-Vice Chancellor (Arts), Kingston University - Simon Mosey, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship & Innovation, University of NottinghamThe visits included- Hasso Platner Institute of Design, Stanford University, Palo Alto (meetings with George Kembel, Executive Director of Stanford d-School, Larry Leifer, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director, Center for Design Research and Charlotte Burgess-Auburn, Director of Community)- IDEO, Palo Alto (meeting with Tim Brown, CEO and Diego Rodriguez, Business Factors Lead)- Meeting with Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, Apple- Jump Associates LLC, San Mateo (meeting with Alonzo Canada, Clynton Taylor and Neal Moore)- Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago (meeting with Patrick Whitney, Direc tor, and Vijay Kumar, Associate Professor)- Stuart Graduate School of Business, IIT, Chicago (meeting with Harvey Kahalas, Dean and Zia Hassan, Dean Emeritus and Professor.- Meeting with Craig Vogel, Director of Centre for Design Research and Innovation, University of Cincinnati- Meeting with James Boyd-Brent, Dean of College of Design and Marc Swackhamer, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, University of Minnesota- Herbst LaZarBell, Chicago (meeting with Walter Herbst, Chairman and Mark Dziersk, Senior Vice

President Design)- McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Northwestern University, Evanston (meeting with Walter Herbst, Director, Master of Product Development Programme and Wallace Hopp, Director, Joint Masters Programme)- Engineering Systems Division, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (meeting with Joel Moses, Acting Director, Engineering Systems Division and Daniel Whitney, Co-Director of the Fast and Flexible Manufacturing Projects)- MediaLab, MIT, Cambridge (Meeting with Bill Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences)1 The programme is a collaboration between the Stuart School of Business and the Institute of Design and offers a dual degree in two and a half year course of study.2 MPD – Master of Product Development – a two-year, part-time programme intended for mid-career managers and executives. MMM – Master of Management and Manufacturing Design, a full-time postgraduate course intended for managers in the manufacturing industries.13