Programme Overview

Four words aptly describe the world today – Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible (in short, the acronym BANI, coined by futurologist Jamais Cascio1). The world of business is, of course, not immune to this. Hypercompetition, a market condition characterized by intense rivalry among firms, rapid technological change, and short product life cycles, political moves of globalization and deregulation and increasing power of mass consumption, has been evident since the last few decades of the 20th century. As traditional sources of competitive advantages built on firm-specific value chains eroded, businesses had to pivot to build new sources of differentiation. However, the uncertainties of BANI, driven by unanticipated global scale events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, a new vigorous nationalism that is weaponizing trade, investments and market access through sovereign national governmental actions, the global imperatives of climate change and looming risks of natural disasters have created new challenges for business firms. Most geopolitical experts expect a decade of fragility, conflict and enhanced uncertainties. Agility, innovation, continuous pivoting of business models, value chains and inter-firm relations at a global scale is the new mantra for organizations to wade through the uncertainties of the next decade.

This requires diffusion of design skills and pivoting abilities across managerial levels in new age organizations. In this new world, it is not enough to innovate at the cutting edge of technology. Product innovations have to be designed with a deep and empathetic understanding of consumers, with sustainability of consumption and fragility of global supply chains at the core. Keeping these at the forefront, the program “Innovation by Design: Playbook for New Age Leadership” offers specific methods for agile innovation that leaders can readily put to use to develop consumer-centric and sustainable products and business models. To this end, the program offers an introduction to strategic considerations for innovation in a world that is increasingly becoming unpredictable and chaotic, Design Thinking as a specific tool, and organizational culture as a source of competitive advantage to institutionalize design thinking.

Programme Objective

The objectives of this program are to:

• Understand strategic perspectives on innovation
• Understand the Design Thinking approach to product innovation and develop basic skills to lead Design Thinking projects
• Understanding organization structures that support innovation: Skunkworks, prototyping and pivots
• Understand the concept of Organizational Culture and develop basic cultural diagnostic skills
• Understand how to fund innovation and scale innovation