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Friday, 16 June 2006 | Levent OZLER
Design Management at MIP-Politecnico di Milano
Design is increasingly becoming a major competitive weapon in today's competition. An increasing number of firms in fact have recognized the importance of design and design driven innovation as a mean to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.
Firms are also recognizing that in today's business dynamics, where innovation has become the basic rule of competition, the core capability of managers is their attitude to activate and master the processes of innovation. Strategic thinking, vision creation, generation and management of innovation in highly uncertain environments, integration of networks of internal and external resources, teamwork, creativity, and leadership, are the core skills of tomorrow's top managers.
In this context, design culture is deemed to make a strong contribution in shaping these skills. An approach to design that is abductive, interactive and intrinsically oriented to change and to envision new possibilities may indeed provide the fundamental basis for the competence of managers in strategy making and management of innovation.
The strategic relevance of design, its emergence as a core tool for managers, and the setting of management as a core tool for designers, are all factors that are placing design management high in the agenda of management education and business schools.
Design Management at MIP
Why Design Management, at MIP-Politecnico di Milano?
- Italy, and more specifically Milano, is worldwide acknowledged as the world's capital of design. The strength of Italian design rests on its firms, and especially in the capability of Italian CEOs to value the strategic role of design.
- The Italian culture of design management is a culture that has predominantly anticipated today's infusion of design in management and strategy. Design in Italian firms is not simply a matter of styling or of technical choices. It is a strategic factor, the engine that ignites corporate strategy. It involves the integration of technological capabilities, with the understanding of user needs, and a vision of future possibilities connected to the evolution of society.
- Italian design is a design of new meanings and values, and is therefore strictly connected to corporate identity and branding as well as to the definition of a competitive advantage for tomorrow's business environment;
- Politecnico di Milano is at the forefront of the design and the management communities. It is highly regarded as one of the leading international technical universities, and the first and largest that developed in Italy a graduate course on technology management and on design. The culture of management, technology and design of the Politecnico di Milano has given birth to entrepreneurs, designers and professionals that have made the history of Italian design.
- MIP, the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, is the leading business school in Italy when it comes to innovation, technology and design as strategic factors. Its Faculty is comprised of professors from Politecnico di Milano, as well as leading international scholars from prominent international business schools and managers who bring their professional experience to students.
MaDeIn Lab: at Forefront of Design Management Knowledge and Education
The Design Management week is organized by Made in Lab, the laboratory for education on marketing, design and innovation of MIP-Politecnico di Milano (www.mip.polimi.it/madeinlab). Its mission is to educate future and current managers on visioning, promoting and implementing innovative strategies and processes, especially when the cognitive, emotional, experiential and symbolic dimension of products, services and brands are concerned. Made in Lab is developed in cooperation with the Design Management Institute, Boston, the first and leading international institution promoting the culture and practice of design management.
The Aim of the Design Management Week
The design management week aims to offer MBA students an introduction to the challenges, approaches, models and applications of design management and design strategy, for those future managers willing to develop and build the appropriate capabilities and skills to successfully manage design driven innovation.
Prerequisites
To best profit from the content of the week, MBA students would need to have already attended a course on Management of Innovation, Technology Management or Management of Product Development and a course on Marketing and Communication.
Lecturers
The week is a mix of lectures from professors, team exercises and discussions of case studies, keynote speeches from invited managers, methodologies of design management explained and exemplified by design strategists.
The Director of the program is Roberto Verganti, Director of MaDe In Lab. Roberto is a Professor of Management of Innovation at Politecnico di Milano, the Scientific Director of the Master in Strategic Design of Politecnico di Milano, a member of the Scientific Committee of the EIASM (the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management), of the Advisory Council of the Design Management Institute and of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Product Innovation Management.
MaDeIn Lab: http://www.mip.polimi.it/madeinlab
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