After a fairly successful attempt to “scientise” Design we are on a journey to
“businessify” Design. It’s indeed encouraging for the Design community that
business has found its next source of competitive advantage in Design.
However, given the economic crisis that world is into, business is viewed as
a cause of social, environmental, and economic problems. Hence, businesses
need to redefine their role in society. Secondly, businesses adopting Design
in a reductionist way and labeling it as ‘Styl ing”, “Design Thinking”, etc
prohibits Design to realize its full potential in the current Business systems.
This poses a challenge for a design educator to marry Design and Business
for the future designers. The paper discusses an approach in which inputs on
Business can be brought into Design education so that future Designers can
create a win-win situation for both – Business and Design. The paper
describes the experience of past three years of teaching Design Management
course for the UG Design learners at MIT Institute of Design and also
discusses the proposed changes to make the Design Program at MIT ID more
responsive to the socio-economic conditions.
DesignED Asia 2012 Conference
