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Unlocking Strategic Innovation through Effective Design Leadership

5.0 (4)

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2 Weeks

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Cohort-based Course

Drive breakthrough innovation using creative problem-solving techniques and effective stakeholder management with multidisciplinary teams.

25+ years of multidisciplinary leaps ...

dreams • design + life
TED
Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
Nike
Westinghouse Nuclear

Course overview

Feeling stuck on your big idea? Don't go it alone. Multidisciplinary is the way!

Is this happening to you or your teams?


🔥 Feeling marginalized as a designer within the organization (compared to business & tech voices)


🔥 Struggling to find support (time, budget, late stakeholder involvement, etc.)


🔥 Encountering risk aversion to pursuing big ideas with new, innovative approaches


🔥 Fighting through the organization's resistance to change while the market is quickly evolving



Design represents an important voice in shaping the future, but it can't operate in a vacuum. The complexities of our time (e.g., generative AI, economic uncertainty, climate change, cultural movements, etc.) require multidisciplinary, creative problem-solving more than ever. If your a design practitioner or design leader, this course will give you more courage (vs. paralysis) in your work. You'll figure out ways to break through the glass ceiling of misunderstanding and friction when collaborating with tech and business peers. You'll learn ways to build stakeholder empathy, strategic influence and a renewed sense of optimism that you can translate diverse insights and inspiration into meaningful innovation.


What we'll cover together:


• Debunk design's misperceptions and explore the ways designers can influence up and down the value chain

• Optimize multidisciplinary teaming by building effective stakeholder management skills when engaging business & tech colleagues

• Develop future foresight by learning how to curate trends and anticipate many possible (even plausible) future scenarios

• Exploring the connections between design & diversity to give you strategies to evolve your team to mirror the world and its needs

• Foster design transformation by understanding implications on your organization's design roles, methods and key enablers


This live 2-week interactive course, inspired from my first book Reimagining Design (The MIT Press), provides a safe-space to share perspectives, frameworks and tactics on how to elevate design's impact within multidisciplinary teams to unlock meaningful innovation and inspire future growth opportunities for your organization. "Chatham House Rules" apply for each live-session and any asynchronous conversations on the Maven platform.


Why do I want to serve as your instructor?


I want to share tips and tricks that will help you cut through the organizational noise and friction that often gets in our way of making impact with our design skills. From my experience building, growing and serving creative teams at places like Nike and BCG, I want you to get up the learning curve much faster.

Who is this course for ...

01

Experienced Design Practitioners who want to increase their influence and open their aperture to spot holistic, innovation opportunities.

02

Design Leaders who seek new ways to empower and strategically align their design teams to operate at parity alongside other disciplines.

03

Senior Level Executives in design adjacent roles (e.g., Product Management, Engineering, Strategy) who also influence the creative process.

What you’ll get out of this course ...

A playbook to guide your creative problem-solving as design leaders positioned at parity within multidisciplinary teams

Explore innovation opportunities through new lenses that will open your creative aperture. Develop ways to strengthen your creative influence, and include non-designers by fostering their ability to make creative sparks and connections across diverse insights and inspirations.

Key frameworks that help you find diverse inputs, insights and inspirations that can help improve your team's future foresight

Investigate the paradigms that influence our converging, hyper-connected world and draw inspiration from immersing in diverse resources. These paradigms may include newly emerging technologies, trends and exemplars (e.g., startups, research institutes) to curate and study.

A holistic approach to guide your ongoing investment in design capabilities, requiring stakeholder and transition management

Understand the key shifts in role clarity, process and enablers necessary to demonstrate design's potential within your organization. Learn how to drive influence by ensuring design's contributions are closely aligned to the goals and critical needs of the business.

Key perspectives on how to evolve your design career in support of reimagining design's potential to unlock meaningful innovation

Imagine yourself in this opportunity by using our interactive, peer discussions as a mirror to see how you might engage multidisciplinary teams in new ways. Develop ways to lead differently as we exchange hard lessons together. Your voice matters in the work!

A network of creative peers and leaders to elevate your impact

Meet your peers via our live interactive discussions on Zoom. Learn and build together, share feedback and compare notes with each other. You will be able to tap into your cohort after the course ends. Let's have some fun through every step!

This course includes

3 interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

17 in-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

5 projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Oct 21—Oct 27

    Oct

    21

    Course Welcome & Introductions

    Mon 10/214:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    Oct

    26

    Session 1

    Sat 10/264:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

    Debunking Design's Misperceptions to Expand Your Influence

    3 items

    Optimizing Multidisciplinary Teaming through Effective Stakeholder Management

    3 items

    Developing Future Foresight through Trend Curation & Future Scenarios

    3 items

Week 2

Oct 28—Nov 2

    Nov

    2

    Session 2

    Sat 11/24:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

    Exploring Connections between Design + Diversity to Evolve Your Teams

    3 items

    Fostering Design Transformation through Design Role Clarity, Methods & Enablers

    3 items

    Examples of Achieving Design Value within Multidisciplinary Opportunities

    3 items

Post-course

    Suggested Readings & Resources

    3 items

Bonus

    Book Additional 1:1 Time with Kevin

    1 item

5.0 (4 ratings)

What students are saying

Meet your instructor ...

Kevin Bethune

Kevin Bethune

Founder & Chief Creative Officer, dreams • design + life | Best-selling Author, Reimagining Design

Kevin Bethune is the Founder & Chief Creative Officer of dreams • design + life, a think tank that delivers design & innovation services using a human-centered approach. Kevin's background spans engineering, business and design in equal proportion over his 25+ year career (BCG, Nike, Westinghouse Nuclear), positioning him to help brands deliver meaningful innovations to enrich people's lives.


His work represents creative problem-solving that brings multidisciplinary teams together to see the future through an open aperture, and a deep industrial design approach to inform and influence desirable, feasible and business-viable design outcomes.


His first book, Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation (The MIT Press) released with notable acclaim under the Simplicity: Design, Business, Technology, Life Series in March 2022. His second book, Nonlinear: Navigating Design with Curiosity and Conviction (The MIT Press), will be coming out February 4, 2025.


Kevin also serves as a Trustee for ArtCenter College of Design and a Board member for the Design Management Institute (DMI).

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Unlocking Strategic Innovation through Effective Design Leadership

Course schedule

4-6 hours per week

  • 1 Live Welcome Session on October 21st

    9:00am - 10:00am PST

    Meet your cohort and understand what to expect.

  • 2 Consecutive Live-Sessions on Saturdays

    9:00am - 11:00am PST

    Get together with Kevin Bethune and your cohort peers for live interactive discussion and sharing of perspectives.

  • October 26th & November 2nd, 2024

    Our second cohort will embark on two live, interactive sessions with asynchronous lesson material and projects before and in between, as well as having resources to continue explorations after the course concludes.

  • Weekly projects

    ~2 hours per week

    We'll provide exercises for students to perform their own independent investigations on where design, creativity and/or innovation questions could be applied to their day-to-day realities. They will have opportunities to bring their findings back into the next live session.

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active hands-on learning

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Interactive and project-based

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

Frequently Asked Questions

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Unlocking Strategic Innovation through Effective Design Leadership