Introduction to the course

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From the course by The University of Sydney

Design strategy: Design thinking for business strategy and entrepreneurship

100 ratings

The University of Sydney

Design strategy: Design thinking for business strategy and entrepreneurship

100 ratings

This course is for entrepreneurial managers who are looking for tools and techniques to introduce exciting, innovative products or services to market quickly and informed by high-quality customer insights. It is applicable to a range of organizations from small-medium sized enterprises through to corporates, and across a range of industrial segments. The problem this course helps address is the constant pressure managers face to be innovative and introduce novel products and services for their customers. However, many creative ideas get ‘stuck’ in the boardroom or are subject to intra-organizational tensions or group think. This course provides methodologies to break through these challenges. We build on the widely known concept of design thinking but update it and apply it to advance business strategy and entrepreneurship. Over five weeks you will learn what ‘design strategy’ is, how it differs from traditional design thinking and business strategy, and how it can be used to improve existing products or services in your business, or introduce breakthrough ideas. We will also provide an exclusive, deep-dive into the practical application and impact of these strategies in one of Australia’s newest, most innovative financial institutions, UBank, and the global re-insurance giant, Swiss Re. Through conversations with their Senior Executive Leadership Teams, including UBank’s CEO, we will explore how they have embedded innovation through design thinking. By the end of this course, you will have a set of tools to inform product design and development for your own start-up, or to extend the product roadmap of an established organization.

From the lesson

What is design strategy?

This module gives you an introduction to design strategy. We will look at design thinking and the tools behind it and explore the elements of corporate strategy. Then, we will explore how design strategy can be used as a vehicle to communicate corporate strategy.

Introduction to the course4:08

Meet the Instructors

Eric Knight
Associate Professor of Strategic Management and Innovation
Discipline of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Welcome to this course, Design Strategy.

My name is Eric Knight and I'm

a strategy professor at the University of Sydney Business School.

One of the most exciting things in my job is to see what my students do after they leave.

And so, I welcome you to this particular journey in design strategy,

and hope that you find through this course

something that allows you to realize your potential and interest in business.

This course has been created and

administered by the University of Sydney Business School.

And it explores the foundations of our particular approach to

corporate strategy and design thinking which we call Design Strategy.

Over the next few weeks you'll learn about

the design strategy framework and complete a series of

practical exercises that can show you how to apply

the principles of design strategy to your own organizations.

Now, those organizations might be a startup,

it may be a small business,

it may even be a large organization that you are either working or go onto work in.

In each of these cases,

design strategy can be relevant to you.

This course is comprised of five modules of study.

Module one will give you

an overview of the whole concept of design strategy and design thinking.

Module two will introduce you to the concepts of primary market research and how

you craft a meaningful problem statement in the context of a company strategy.

Module three will introduce you to the concept of

prototyping and how you iterate a prototype to eventually get to product market fit.

Module four will provide two practical case studies and demonstrate how

two leading companies are using

design strategy to innovate and solve problems in their everyday business.

In module five we will explore what this course has meant for you and how you can

use Design Strategy to realize

your own vision for your business or for that which you work in.

This course will be led by my close colleague Dr. Carla Harris.

She will help you learn about design strategy and it's

foundations in design thinking which has come from manufacturing,

but is now a meaningful and effective problem

solving tool across a range of different sectors.

Thanks Eric. It's my pleasure to be able to take you through this course,

because it's a subject that I'm really passionate about.

Design strategy has had a huge influence on my career as an executive,

as well as my pathway into entrepreneurship.

Not only did design strategy and the tools that sit behind it design thinking,

helped me identify and refine the idea behind my startup Longevity App,

I also use these methodologies across nearly every function of my business.

From customer research to

product feature selection through to establishing corporate distribution channels,

Design thinking has a vital role.

More importantly, using these techniques when creating and executing against

the company's strategy means that the company's strategy is

embedded right throughout the organization and its stakeholders.

And that's what design strategy is all about.

So, it doesn't matter whether you're a female entrepreneur,

a middle manager for a listed entity,

or a small business owner in rural Australia,

design strategy will be helpful for you.

Our hope in this course is to introduce you to more than just theory.

We'd like to provide you with practical insights that you

can use as a manager, or as an entrepreneur,

today or into the future to allow you to better

enhance the speed and effectiveness of your decision making.

We will draw on in-depth interviews where you'll

learn about design strategy from practice.

We're going to draw on two leading companies,

a digital bank, UBank,

and a global re-insurance giant Swiss Re.

You'll also hear from two recent University of Sydney MBA

graduates who share their experience of design strategy with you,

and how it's allowed them to shift their own problem solving mindset.

I hope you enjoy this course.

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