Today’s workplace calls for a new style of leadership to embolden and accelerate innovation. Design offers a novel way to discover market opportunities, experiment to validate concepts and mitigate risk, and deliver value to all stakeholders. This course offers hands-on experience applying human-centered design process to real-world challenges, and requires you to explore the world around you. Learn how to engage with end users, effectively frame problems, identify potential solutions, and build prototypes to test assumptions and learn what works (and doesn’t). Then dive into a range of ways large and small to bring design innovation into your organization.
This course is part of the Organizational Leadership Specialization
Offered By
About this Course
Offered by

Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research and teaching university with campuses in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, and Doha, Qatar. Northwestern combines innovative teaching and pioneering research in a highly collaborative environment that transcends traditional academic boundaries.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Using Design Principles to Innovate and Find Opportunities
You will learn that the first step in the design process is finding opportunities. Human-centered designers do so by immersing themselves in a particular user context to identify areas of focus for design innovation.
Exploring Ideas
How do we take the opportunities that we've uncovered and turn them into new possibilities? In this module we'll explore ideation, sketching, and storyboarding as tools to generate and communicate ideas.
Prototyping to Learn
It is easy to think of prototypes as “drafts” of the final design, but in this module we’ll teach you to think of prototypes a bit differently: as tools for learning. We will discuss approaches for maximizing the amount that you learn from prototypes, and iterating your way rapidly toward outstanding results.
Leading Design Innovation
How do you bring design innovation to your organization and sustain it over time? In this module we will learn theory and practical techniques to help you lead an organization that routinely produces innovative products, services, and systems.
Reviews
- 5 stars63.38%
- 4 stars16.61%
- 3 stars8.47%
- 2 stars4.74%
- 1 star6.77%
TOP REVIEWS FROM LEADERSHIP THROUGH DESIGN INNOVATION
Excellent course which provides the foundation to make Design a part of Leadership
Probably the hardest so far of the Org Leadership Specialization, but in a good way. This course really stretched me and gave me skills I can use with any job.
Enjoyed the journey through the course. The projects are integral to gain confidence on applying design thinking. However, they are time intensive and require commitment.
Overall Great Course I was challenged to think using a different process.
About the Organizational Leadership Specialization
Equip yourself to successfully lead organizations through clarity of purpose and effective collaboration — by building and motivating teams; designing and delivering powerful stories; developing strategies to appropriately influence; understanding underlying customer analytics and applying innovative approaches to deliver impact.

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