Back to Design-Led Strategy: Design thinking for business strategy and entrepreneurship
The University of Sydney

Design-Led Strategy: Design thinking for business strategy and entrepreneurship

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.

Status: Corporate Strategy
Status: Innovation
IntermediateCourse20 hours

Featured reviews

DH

5.0Reviewed May 15, 2019

Excellent structure, insights and case studies to give a solid foundation course into design strategy. Will be applying directly these tools and learnings in my consulting work.

AS

4.0Reviewed Jan 16, 2025

I found the content insightful, and the topics were explained clearly. However, I felt the course could have delved a bit deeper into each topic for a more comprehensive understanding.

DC

4.0Reviewed Feb 12, 2021

The course was succinct and provided useful case studies and tools to help implement a design thinking process. I would recommend it to other busy professionals who need a crash course on this topic.

BB

5.0Reviewed Mar 4, 2019

I really enjoyed this course. It uses real cases to help you empathise with corporate internal issues which happens in any company. I definitely learned from it and recommend it.

EW

4.0Reviewed Feb 23, 2021

The course is very useful and I've learned a lot. A suggestion is to add a few examples of completed artefacts, e.g. Business Model Canvas and explain the theory around the completed examples.

BH

5.0Reviewed May 9, 2020

This course is very advisable for university students, entrepreneurs or anyone who want to have a big picture for the application of design thinking in business innovation.

DD

5.0Reviewed May 23, 2021

Design Led Strategy: Design thinking for business strategy and entrepreneurship is very useful course. Case studies and templates provided for Business Model Canvasing is very good.

RL

5.0Reviewed Sep 6, 2020

It's a very valuable and professional course. If you are starting your own business this course will help you to solve many doubts on the process of problem resolution and planning.

JJ

5.0Reviewed Aug 19, 2019

This was very interesting and detailed oriented learning experience, giving insights towards the overall design leg strategy and components of creating a design led customer driven value proposition.

FF

5.0Reviewed Jun 18, 2023

Tôi thấy rất ấn tượng với chương trình học tập linh hoạt trên Cousera. Thật may mắn vì tôi được tham gia học tập tại đây. Những kiến thức này nhất định tôi sẽ áp dụng vào dự án sắp tới của chúng tôi.

SK

5.0Reviewed Dec 9, 2020

It's really an excellent course for UX professionals. It takes deep insight from the design thinking process to Design Strategy to Corporate Strategy. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

LN

5.0Reviewed Sep 17, 2021

The course material was well packed and perfectly delivered. You would feel like is classroom-based. I think customer journey mapping should be included. Overall it was interesting and insightful.

All reviews

Showing: 20 of 328

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2.0
Reviewed Jul 3, 2019
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