Should Design Thinking be taught differently in business & design schools?

The acceptance of design as a powerful, new tool, by some important and influential publications, corporations and visionaries from the business sector and their interpretation of design thinking has alienated many members from the design community and created two very distinctive, and at times, polarizing camps.

Some business strategists,and even members of the d-community, are accusing designers of not getting Design Thinking: “Design it is too important to be left only to designers.” Designers: “What in the name of god gives you the arrogance to imply all of a sudden that you understand the inner workings of my mind, if for years you did not give me the time of day?”

I believe both camps are right, but their approaches are misguided.In my opinion in order for DT to reach its potential, it is imperative to establish a proper relationship between Design and Business. But how?

The answer came to me a few years ago when the “Zollverein,” a business school focusing on DT, was founded in Essen, Germany. One of the first paragraphs stating the objectives of the school still resonates in my mind: “mutual respect between logic and intuition.” Those words were instantly adopted by my unfinished manifesto. I believe that sentence should be engraved on the walls of all business and learning institutions regardless of whether they even know anything about DT. Once that fundamental principle is adopted by both sectors, everything is possible and doable.

Common Objectives in B-schools and D-schools.

• Both schools operate in context to an eco system.
  
• Both programs need to be developed to fit both mindsets.
  
• D-schools and B-schools must adopt different curricula and learning strategies that don’t overlap but complement.
  
• Both schools need to design new programs that are very much anchored in the NATURAL DNA of their discipline.
  
• Both schools need to develop protocols and strategies, and find tools that bridge the mindsets between them, and simultaneously help to cross-pollinate their creative outputs.
  
• Both schools need to develop new platforms that create contextual clarity between left and right brain thinking.

DT objectives in D-schools

• Design schools focus on mining the essence of the design mind, exploring new potentials and exposing and exploring new applications.
  
• Design schools need to learn how to operate in business settings.
  
• Design schools need to teach how to harvest, document and communicate the “Thinking” behind the “Doing.”
  
• D-schools should disassemble existing design disciplines and develop novel fields based on interdisciplinary interaction within its own domain and non-related sectors.

DT objectives for B-schools

• Business needs to understand design.
  
• B-schools need to expose students to design.
  
• B-schools need to teach design literacy.
  
• Business schools need to develop new subjects that interpret data from D-schools or simply have brand new relevant applications.
  
• It is not in the interest of b-schools to copy design; it is in its interest to understand it. Understanding design is the foundation of practicing and applying Design Thinking.
  

One of the objectives of the DTX blog is to “deep dive” into these subjects in more detail and study their merits and shortcomings.