Course Preview: Innovation of Products and Services: MIT’s Approach to Design Thinking

19 October 2022

[Video Transcript] Innovation of Products and Services: MIT's Approach to Design Thinking


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Welcome to our innovation course, featuring MIT's approach to design thinking. I've structured the course into six modules. The first module is about design thinking skills and how they work together to create a systematic process of innovation for products and services.

In the second module, we'll take one of those skills which are about understanding customers, and we'll learn the methods specific to identifying customer needs and latent needs, and unaddressed needs. In the third module, we'll talk about applied creativity, brainstorming, and some of the good methods around making that an effective process for generating a wide range of solutions to the problem at hand. We'll also talk about down selection. How do you take those many ideas and identify which of the most promising ones?

In the fourth module, we'll apply this process specifically to the design of services. How exactly are products and services different? And what are some of the techniques that need to change in the development process? Module five is about financial analysis. Specifically, how do we take the methods you probably know around the time value of money, net present value, and discounted cash flow? And we'll use them to evaluate product development projects.

Finally, the sixth module will look at the impact of the products and services that we design and use on the environment. We'll look at environmental sustainability and what are some of the ways I'd like you to learn to think about making decisions better in the design process in order to reduce environmental impact.

Throughout the course, I'll ask you to work on a project. You'll work in a small team to explore a  product or service opportunity. We'll start the project with an opportunity tournament in which you'll each contribute a few ideas. We'll take the best of those ideas and you'll work on them in your teams. The idea behind the project is to explore, is this a great opportunity?

I'll give you a framework to use in the project called real, win, worth it. Where you'll explore these three dimensions. Is there a real customer need? Can we win this opportunity? And is it a  worthwhile business proposition? I hope you have fun with the project, I hope you'll enjoy the course, and I look forward to working with you.

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