Leadership

How to Save the MBA: Teach Students to Think Like Designers

By Stacy Blackman

Updated on: November 19, 2009 / 11:25 AM EST / MoneyWatch

A response to the criticisms lobbed at MBA programs for producing flawed business leaders has been for programs to ramp up their ethics offerings. But according to Roger Martin, head of Canada's Rotman School of Management, what future business leaders really need is an education in multiple fields, including design.

In Martin's new book The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage, he argues that MBA programs focused solely on analytical thinking have made business managers lose their creative and intuitive sides. A blend of "design thinking" and analysis, Martin argues, could help MBA grads emerge as more complete managers.

So how can you integrate design thinking if you're already in the business world? Fast Company blogger Dev Patnaik recently participated in a lecture with Martin, and shared a few tips from their conversation:

1. Think of yourself as a designer when working out business strategies: Coming up with business strategies should emphasize possibilities over existing information and frameworks. Patnaik writes, "You can't analyze your way to real strategy. You have to create it from data, guts, empathy, creativity and a little thin air."
2. Make your leadership style a blend of analysis and intuition: Patnaik brings up the often-cited Steve Jobs to illustrate this point. While Jobs' intuition has produced great innovations like the iPod, his lack of business analysis has led to flops like the Power Mac G4 Cube. Business leaders need to work on developing both skills.
3. Throw out your templates: True "design thinking" happens when managers try to solve a problem or create a product that hasn't been seen in any form. However, Patnaik writes, "Most people, whatever their background, are more comfortable reapplying a formula that has worked in the past than at generating new possibilities. They just try to use a template from an existing success, which is the chief reason we see so many copycat products and copycat strategies."

Eames chair image courtesy of Flickr user geraintandkim, CC 2.0.