Design thinking is a powerful process of problem solving that begins with understanding unmet customer needs. From that insight emerges a process for innovation that encompasses concept development, applied creativity, prototyping, and experimentation. When design thinking approaches are applied to business, the success rate for innovation improves substantially.
This program is delivered in collaboration with Emeritus. Please register on the Emeritus website.
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Mastering Design Thinking (online) Certificate Track: Strategy and Innovation Location:
Online Tuition:
$3,300 Program Days (for ACE Credit) 3
Design thinking is a powerful approach to new product development that begins with understanding unmet customer needs. It’s a human-centered design process that approaches problem-solving with understanding the user needs. Design thinking encompasses concept development, applied creativity, prototyping, and experimentation. When design thinking approaches are applied to business, the success rate for innovation has been seen to improve substantially.
Design-driven companies such as Apple, Coca-Cola, IBM, Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Whirlpool have outperformed the S&P 500 over the past 10 years by an accumulated 211% in what's called the Design Value Index—a portfolio of 16 publicly traded companies that integrate design thinking into corporate strategy. According to a 2016 report from the Design Management Institute, this marks the third consecutive year the index has shown an excess of 200% over the S&P 500.
The Mastering Design Thinking program will lead participants through a step by step, design thinking process. To be considered successful, innovations have to solve the three key dimensions of Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability.
Desirability: Is this product or service addressing a real customer need? Feasibility: Can we develop a solution that is technically feasible and better than competitors? Viability: Is there a viable business model around this product or service?
Upon completion of this program, you will be able to:
Understand the design thinking process.
Identify and assess opportunities through customer needs analysis.
Create clear product specifications based on customer needs that are desirable, feasible, and viable.
Generate and evaluate new product and service concepts through applied creativity.
Implement a proven 4-step method for planning and executing a prototype.
Design services for enriched customer experiences.
Create and establish a robust product architecture.
Evaluate the economics of product development.
Design products and services with sustainability in mind.
Plan and manage innovation projects effectively.
This executive program integrates rich, interactive media such as videos, infographics, and e-learning activities as well as traditional components such as live faculty lectures, group projects, and individual assignments. The program design facilitates collaborative learning through discussion forums and a team-based capstone project. This results in an enhanced peer network that delivers value long after the course ends.
Orientation Module: Welcome to your Online Campus
Module 1: Design Thinking Skills
Skills expected of design thinking practitioners
Innovation challenges, Real-Win-Worth framework
Altitude case study – innovation processes, leadership, and overall culture
Module 2: Identifying Customer Needs
Product development process and concept development phase in design planning and analysis
Customer needs and markets
Types of product users
Customer needs analysis
Module 3: Product Specifications
Translating customer needs into measurable specifications
Benchmarking needs vs. specifications
Dynamics of product specifications
Quality function deployment (house of quality)
Module 4: Applied Creativity
Problem decomposition techniques and solution concepts
Brainstorming principles and their efficacy in creative thinking
System exploration and concept/down-selection
Module 5: Prototyping
Prototyping and its relevance in the concept development phase
Types of prototyping Prototyping strategy
Rapid prototyping and virtual prototyping Prototyping examples
Module 6: Design for Services
Service development process
Service cycle experience map
Product vs. service systems
Service innovation examples
Module 7: Product Architecture
Types of product architecture: integral and modular
Examples of integral and modular architectures
Implications of product architecture on the design process
Module 8: Financial Analysis
Product development economics
Project financial modeling
Calculating Net Present Value (NPV) and its influence over product decision making
Cash flow analysis
Module 9: Design for Environment
DFE principles and decision making
How DFE integrates with the product development process
Product life cycle and environmental impacts
Herman Miller story
Module 10: Product Development Processes
Systematic innovation process: Altitude case study
Types of development processes – staged, spiral, and agile methodologies
This program is for individuals and teams who want to adopt the powerful practice of design thinking in their organization. Whether entrepreneur or intrapreneur, anyone responsible for driving innovation and growth should attend, including functional and cross-functional teams.
Please note that faculty are subject to change and not all faculty teach in each session of the program.
General Motors Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management Professor of Management Science and Engineering Systems Co-Director, System Design and Management Program
Steven D. Eppinger is the General Motors Leaders for Global Operations Professor, a Professor of Management Science and Engineering Systems, and the Co-Director of the System Design and Management Program at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Eppinger served as deputy dean of MIT Sloan from 2004 to 2009; as faculty co-director of the Leaders for Global Operations (formerly MIT Leaders for Manufacturing) and the System Design and Management programs from 2001 to 2003; and as co-director of the Center for Innovation in Product Development from 1999 to 2001. Prior to joining the MIT faculty in 1988, he worked as a machinist, manufacturing engineer, product designer, and consultant in both prototype and production operations.
His research efforts are applied to improving product design and development practices. Conducted within MIT’s Center for Innovation in Product Development, his work focuses on organizing complex design processes in order to accelerate industrial practices, and has been applied primarily in the automotive, electronics, aerospace, and equipment industries. At MIT Sloan, Eppinger has created an interdisciplinary product development course in which graduate students from engineering, management, and industrial design programs collaborate to develop new products. He also teaches MIT’s executive programs in the area of product development.
In 1993, he received both MIT’s Graduate Student Council Teaching Award and the MIT Sloan Award for Innovation and Excellence in Management Education. Eppinger has co-authored a widely used textbook entitled, Product Design and Development, Fifth Edition (McGraw-Hill, 2008). The author of more than 40 articles in refereed academic journals and conferences, he received the ASME Best Paper Award in Design Theory and Methodology in 1995 and again in 2001. Eppinger lectures regularly for international corporations and in executive education programs, and has consulted for or conducted research with more than 50 firms. He serves on the Research Advisory Council of the Design Management Institute and on the Advisory Board of Directors of the Society of Concurrent Product Development.
Eppinger holds SB, SM, and ScD degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT.
Director and Founder, MIT Integrated Design & Management (IDM) Senior Lecturer Principal, Designturn Inc.
Matthew S. Kressy, director and founder of the MIT Integrated Design & Management (IDM) master’s degree track, is an expert in product design and development. As an entrepreneur and founder of Designturn, he has designed, invented, engineered, and manufactured products for startups, Fortune 500 companies, and everything in between.
Kressy believes in interdisciplinary, design-driven product development derived from deep user research, creative concept generation, and rapid prototype iteration. He is passionate about teaching this approach to the design process. In fact, since 1999, Kressy has co-taught collaborative courses in product design and development at top design and business schools including the MIT Sloan School of Management, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and Harvard Business School.
As IDM director, Kressy leads curriculum development and teaches the track’s primary and required courses. He holds a BFA in industrial design from RISD.
David Robertson is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management where he teaches Product Development and Digital Product Management. Prior to MIT, Robertson was a Professor of Practice at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and from 2002 through 2010 was the LEGO Professor of Innovation and Technology Management at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. Robertson has also held several executive management positions in enterprise software companies, and spent five years at McKinsey & Company in the U.S. and Sweden.
Robertson is the author of the award-winning book about LEGO’s near-bankruptcy and spectular recovery: Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry (Crown, 2013). His most recent book is The Power of Little Ideas: A Low-Risk, High-Reward Approach to Innovation, published by Harvard Business School Press in May of 2017. He has published articles or had his research featured in Wired, Forbes, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Strategy+Business, Sloan Management Review, The Financial Times, and many other business journals.
Robertson has a PhD and MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a BS from the University of Illinois.
MIT Sloan Executive Education is collaborating with online education provider EMERITUS Institute of Management to offer a portfolio of high-impact online programs. By working with EMERITUS, MIT Sloan Executive Education is able to broaden access beyond on-campus offerings in a collaborative and engaging format that stays true to the quality of MIT Sloan and MIT as a whole. EMERITUS’ approach to learning is based on a cohort-based design to maximize peer to peer sharing and includes live teaching with world-class faculty and hands-on project based learning. In the last year, more than 7,500 students from over 120+ countries have benefited professionally from EMERITUS’ courses.
To access our programs, participants will need the following:
Valid email address
Computing device connected to the internet: PC/laptop, tablet, or smartphone
Latest version of their preferred browser to access our learning platform
Microsoft Office suite and PDF viewer to view content such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDF files or transcripts
Programs may necessitate the usage of different software, tools, and applications. Participants will be informed about these additional requirements at the registration stage or during program commencement. Our program advisors are also available to respond to any queries about these requirements.
All reviews are submitted by program attendees and are not edited by MIT Sloan Executive Education. Read more about our ratings and reviews.
Pablo Rodriguez C:
Great program, brilliantly delves into the application of Design Thinking in the process of designing a complex product or service. I really enjoyed Professor Eppinger's classes.
The program is highly recommended for any design engineer, as well as any person interested in applying design thinking to their business model.
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Date Attended:
Mar 12, 2020
Date Reviewed:
Jun 29, 2020
RAJANIKANTH A:
The course is quite helpful in designing the new product or service offerings. The examples taken to describe the concept is very well connected to real life and hence easy to understand the concepts.
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Date Attended:
Nov 14, 2019
Date Reviewed:
May 2, 2020
Alan G:
great program very inspiring
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Date Attended:
Oct 25, 2018
Date Reviewed:
Feb 1, 2020
Abhijeet U:
One of my best learning experiences - Content, Delivery & Engagement.
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Date Attended:
May 30, 2019
Date Reviewed:
Nov 27, 2019
Fabienne S:
The course couldn't be better! Excellent content and the experience of working with colleagues from different cultures was fantastic!
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Date Attended:
May 30, 2019
Date Reviewed:
Nov 19, 2019
Krzysztof R:
It was amazing trip with this course.
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Date Attended:
Feb 14, 2019
Date Reviewed:
Oct 15, 2019
Frank Morales A:
I recommend attending this course since it will provide to anyone the roadmap about this topic accordingly into your future career.
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Date Attended:
Oct 25, 2018
Date Reviewed:
Apr 10, 2019
Chamara S:
The course content and the relevance were great. However, the Emeritus delivery platform (Canvas), compared to some of other platforms which I have used, was not the best learning experience.
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Experience:
Date Attended:
Oct 25, 2018
Date Reviewed:
Feb 27, 2019
Azael Navarro J:
It is a great experience, and this is could be the first step to go for other 3 programs to achieve the executive certification.
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Date Attended:
Jun 14, 2018
Date Reviewed:
Nov 24, 2018
Registration for this program is done through Emeritus.
Professor Steven D. Eppinger talks about the Mastering Design Thinking program.
Fast Facts
3 months Entirely online learning 6-8 hours/week
Our pedagogical approach, designed to bring concepts to life, includes: 128 video lectures 3 Live Teaching Sessions 3 Group Projects 10 Assignments 1 Capstone Project 7 Real World Applications
To further personalize the program modules, live teaching sessions are scheduled during the program term, often with Q&A. For participants who are unable to attend these sessions live, a recording is made available so nothing is missed. Our industry-leading learning platform allows participants to create a profile, connect and collaborate with peers, and interact with academic/industry experts such as program leaders, coaches, and teaching assistants. Assignments are often linked to participant’s real-world situations, making these concepts inherently practical.
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