COURSE NUMBER: EW290T.11

COURSE TITLE: Innovative Leadership Through Design

UNITS OF CREDIT: 2 units

INSTRUCTOR: Angèle Beausoleil

E-MAIL ADDRESS: angele.beausoleil@gmail.com

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME:
            Saturday 6/3               9 AM – 4 PM              Sunday 6/4      9 AM – 12 PM
            Saturday 6/10             9 AM – 4 PM
            Saturday 6/17             9 AM – 4 PM
            Saturday 6/24             9 AM – 4 PM              Sunday 6/25    9 AM – 12 PM
           

PREREQUISITE(S): None

CLASS FORMAT: Lecture, in-class activities and real, work-related cases.

REQUIRED READINGS: No required textbook. Required readings to be posted on bCourses.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: 2 individual assignments and 2 team based projects.

CAREER FIELD:  Cross-functional team leaders; brand, operations, marketing and Line of Business (LOB) managers.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
As the business environment becomes more unpredictable, organizations require leaders who are capable of navigating uncertainty and making the most of an opportunity. Leadership will increasingly mean being comfortable managing and motivating diverse teams of creative and critical thinkers. Truly innovative, disruptive processes and technologies will be needed to address local or global problems. This course will challenge you as individuals and as peer coaches, to explore relevant work-based issues and propose solutions that create social, cultural, economic, and environmental value using a strategic design method and techniques tool-kit. 
This methods course aims to deepen your understanding of human-centered design research and increase your ability to handle specific techniques for data collection, analysis and translation. The techniques tool-kit comprises design tools and processes used for decades in R&D and manufacturing sectors, and strategic tools used in the consulting sector.
The course is well suited for those interested in integrating strategy, design and innovation in their current roles. Upon completion, you will have gained a greater understanding of the innovation process, used design research methods to observe, describe and interpret customer needs and problems, and practiced ways to ideate, design and communicate solutions. 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:

Dr. Angèle Beausoleil has been actively involved in designing and launching innovation processes and platforms inside organizations for the past 25 years. A former strategist and innovation executive for Canadian and UK firms, she has worked closely with US and global brands on reframing services, products and platforms that solve real human-centered problems. A recent PhD graduate from the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, she studies and leads research on how innovativeness (innovative capacity) can be learned.