I applaud the new set of MBA programs (California College of Arts, IIT, and others) focused on merging design thinking and business thinking.

There are other paths to the same practices, perhaps closer to home. You can’t do what I’m about to say in a highly structured MBA program, but if you find a program that looks at essentials plus “majors”, then doesn’t require a major, you can do some really neat stuff. Your requirement for such programs: design training and experience. That’s it.

The University of Kansas Graduate School of Business provided me exactly this opportunity. I was able to not focus on mergers & acquisitions, operations, IPOs, advertising, PR, and the like. Instead, based on my background, I took some marketing courses, some organizational design, some entrepreneurism, and some strategy. Not enough in any of those to designate a concentration.

I learned some really replicable methods of product innovation; I’ve incorporated these methods to help me and my team break up design log jams.

I continue to learn some wonderful information about organizing for innovation from such design-savvy sources as Jack Welch, Wharton School of Business, and Harvard Business Review.

I don’t assert that all students in the program got out the benefits I did. Nor do I assert that even if they had taken my set of courses they would have gotten the same information. But when you combine design training and product design with the information, the result was quite useful.

Right now I’m sitting in a presentation listening to a series of assertions about “what every MBA knows” and, by inference, what they don’t. Well. I don’t know anything about IPOs other than as an exit strategy for entrepreneurial ventures. I can talk about the strategy behind mergers, and why they usually don’t work well.

So if you are thinking about a design MBA, you can go get one. But many flexible MBA programs will provide you what you need.

Original Source: Little Springs Design