Vol. 2: design-management.de

Those of you who know me a little bit closer know that a part of my annual revenues come from lecturing activities in the areas of design management and post-graduate MBA (namely Strategy) education.

Ever since I’ve finished my MBA eleven years ago a lot has changed in the landscape of (under) graduate and post graduate education to the better (at least from my German perspective). For the largest part of my MBA studies I grew up in the stereotype setting of ‘ex-cathedra teaching’ with a professor dispensing his knowledge in time slots of 90 mins.

Fortunately in 1995 I’ve met my doctoral thesis adviser, a professor from the states, who offered me my first job as a university teaching assistant. Under his guidance I’ve learned most of my basic (case) teaching skills from the application of Harvard Business School cases which we’ve used on a weekly basis with under graduate students. For that time this approach has been quite a big step in contrast to the paradigm described above.

However from my perspective the key success & learning ingredient of this approach somehow goes back to Maria Montessori the “Italian educator, scientist, physician, philosopher, feminist, and humanitarian, and the first early childhood educator to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize” (quoted from Wikipedia). Her approach towards educating individuals is often quoted as: “Help me in order to help myself”.

With business professionals being confronted with more and more complexity (wicked problems) these days educational practice and theories which still refer back to the “ex-cathedra” approach clearly do not address the need of professionals any longer.

During the last couple of months (if not for even longer) a lot of discussions ruminated about the superiority of ‘Design Thinking’ in contrast to ‘Business Thinking’ (whatever this might mean?!). Therefore I’ve read with great pleasure Louis Rosenberg’s article in the latest issue of “AMBIDEXTROUS Magazine” a project by Stanford’s d.school. In this one page ‘Point of View’ titled “Design Is Elementary” Rosenberg nicely describes that it’s not a question of being a designer or manager, but rather a question of much room for exploration and trial & error is still granted in corporate environments these days.

His case illustration are kids who according to his experience are far more “… willing to try concept after concept, quickly tearing each failure apart and starting over. As a result they explored a wider range of ideas with more vigor and less fear than their older counterparts. They also seemed more comfortable with the messy process of design, as if they were confident experts. In comparison, the college students fit the profile of tentative novices.”

As he goes on he says: “Prolific designers are simply those who have managed not to lose a magical critical quality—namely, they’re still kids at heart”. For the changed needs of (design) management education this clearly refers back to Maria Montessori: “Help design managers to help themselves!”

This aim/motto is part of my ‘business new years resolution’: Hope to meet you at one or the other place in 2007 :-)