Context and Approach

The Design Thinking in Management course was shaped by LagomWorks for a leading private university in the UAE, ranked among the top 300 universities in the world for Business and Management Studies in the QS World University Rankings by subject.

This course endeavoured to develop a mindset of ‘…curiosity, expanded awareness, deferred judgment, and flexible adaptation’ (Hasbrouck 2018: 26).

We adopted an approach towards social / business problems which blended design thinking (or human-centered design) in the sense of ‘what’ and implementation or operationalization of solutions on one hand, and ethnographic thinking on the other, in the sense of thinking about an evolving ‘why’ and the relations and flows thereof, an impactful aid for future leaders and entrepreneurs. 

The course permitted student participants to practically experience this blended process as they worked on real-life wicked problems, during the length of the course. Relevance was paramount. LW faculty worked with GCC based entrepreneurs and organizations to develop case studies pertinent to the region, ongoing developments and initiatives, as well as specific industries and domains which the Business School was already focusing on. At this intersection, we identified select organizations and solicited use cases which they were seeking fresh perspectives on. These use cases were then integrated in the course and used for the design sprints. In this manner, we leveraged the course to create a repository of ideas and/ or low to medium fidelity prototypes which the organizations could consider as potential solutions.

As an outcome, this led to stronger student-industry connections as well as deeper institute-industry partnerships.