Design is increasingly becoming a major competitive weapon in today’s competition, especially in advanced economies. In any industry, whether in product or services, in consumer or industrial markets, firms are achieving a remarkable competitive advantage thanks to design, i.e. thanks to the capability to create products and services that are more meaningful to customers. Large and small companies such as Apple, Nintendo, Alessi, BMW, Starbucks, Whole Foods Market, STMicroelectronics, Bayer, do not compete only on technical functionality. They succeed by providing people meaningful experiences that are also superior in terms of emotional and symbolic value.

Executives who nowadays work in the field of strategy and innovation need to understand the role of design in business and how to create an organization with strong design capabilities. The course therefore provides the frameworks and tools for managers who want to master the power of design and become leaders in organizations that compete on design:

- part 1 of the course focuses on how to develop a design-driven innovation strategy (i.e. how to define a design vision for a company; how to identify and select projects that create new emotional experiences for customers; how to profit from design)

- part 2 focuses on the process to create breakthrough innovations based on design

- part 3 focuses on the role of top executives on building design capabilities in their organization,by structuring the internal innovation team and by collaborating with external creative talent.

The course is inherent to CBS’s current strategic focus on design in business.

The course's development of personal competences:

The course is intrinsically managerial: it is not a course on how to design, but on how to be an executive who make business through design. It is therefore targeted to students who want to become leaders in manufacturing or service firms that compete on design, with a position in the areas of strategy, innovation, marketing, R&D, business development. More specifically, the course develops capabilities to:
-Manage scenario-building projects, targeted at understanding the evolution of design, and how new emotional and symbolic values can be enabled by technologies
-Create new strategic visions that address those scenarios in terms of core values and identity of a firm brand, products and services
-Translate that vision into a strategic portfolio of design-driven innovations
-Define the design processes that allow to implement the strategy and deliver breakthrough products and services
-Be immersed into global design networks and identify, select, attract and nurture the most promising creative talents
-Lead an organization that creates breakthrough designs and know how to profit from design

Roberto Verganti, Design-Driven Innovation – Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating what Things Mean. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2009 (textbook of the course)

Tim Brown, “Design Thinking,” Harvard Business Review, June (2008): 84-92.

Roberto Verganti, “Innovating Through Design”, Harvard Business Review, Volume 84, Number 12, 114-122, December, 2006.

Claudio Dell’Era, and Roberto Verganti, “Collaborative Strategies in Design-Intensive Industries: Knowledge Diversity and Innovation”, Long Range Planning, 43, February 2010, 123 – 141

Claudio Dell’Era, Tommaso Buganza, Camilla Fecchio and Roberto Verganti, “Language Brokering: stimulating creativity during the concept development phase”, Creativity and Innovation Management, 20, 1 (2011) 36-48