If you are interested in becoming one of our Design Thinking participant organizations for the Fall 2011 program, please contact Kirk Smith, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Executive Education, College of Business and Economics at 208-426-3116, or ksmith@boisestate.edu
The College of Business and Economics just wrapped up a pilot project that took leaders of four Boise-based companies on a future-driven journey. The project was based on the principles of “design thinking.” Unlike analytical thinking, the creative process encourages the building up of new ideas and out-of-the box thinking.
Design Thinking Group Fall 2010
Teams of leaders from participating companies — Biomark, Intermountain Gas Company, Preco Electronics and St. Luke’s Health System — along with a business faculty member and a student, met several times last semester to learn the design thinking process and tackle an ill-defined problem within each company.
“We came to this with the challenge of redesigning our primary care clinics to become patient-centered medical homes,” said Matt Bell, St. Luke’s Health System vice president of strategic planning. “We all tend to think we know what’s best for our customers but we learned an outside perspective from the Boise State students and professors. There really is value in a divergence of thinking and a convergence of ideas for a solution.”
For Boise-based Biomark, the program was a great way to test the waters on a new product line — tag readers for fish identification.
“There are lots of options for where to take our products but we’re so busy dealing with the work coming through the door that we don’t have time to look 3 or 5 or 10 years down the road,” said company president Dean Park. “We needed a disciplined, repeatable process of thinking about how we move forward. This was motivating and engaging and will lead to a change in culture for our company.”
Boise State’s design thinking program was modeled after a program at Stanford and led by Roy Glen, emeritus faculty member and design thinking expert.
Six faculty members in the College of Business and Economics are now trained in design thinking and the innovative principles are being implemented into a number of courses for students.
The design thinking project is the latest in a string of College of Business and Economics initiatives designed to form a strong network among academic experts and business leaders.
“Creative problem-solving and critical thinking about unstructured questions is ultimately what will make us competitive,” said Kirk Smith, director for executive education. “Our idea is to infuse innovation into local organizations and allow it to spread.”
