• Cotutela con mondo esterno

• Understand the “soft side” of competition and organizations competitive advantages;
• Understand the semiotic soul of products and brands;
• Open the perspective to increase the range of innovation opportunities through design;
• Employ creativity tools to shape innovation trajectories and identify innovative scenarios;
• Understand how to (when and why) apply user analysis qualitative tools;
• Use storytelling and visualization techniques to champion the innovation within and without (with stakeholders) the
  organization boundaries.

The course fits into the overall program curriculum pursuing some of the defined general learning goals. In particular, the course contributes to the development of the following capabilities:

• Understand context, functions, processes in a business and industrial environment and the impact of those factors on business performance

• Identify trends, technologies and key methodologies in a specific domain (specialization streams)

• Develop new ideas and solutions in business and industrial scenarios evolving over time

Expected results will be assessed around three main learning outcomes:

- Trends and Scenario board: where students will be evaluated for their capability to identify technology and social and cultural changing factors that affect the framing, the completion and the reframing of the strategic brief;   

- User analysis board:where students will be evaluated for the depth of articulating user needs/characteristics/attitudes and the capability to represent and visualize "personas" according to concise and appealing frames; 

- New business ideas development: where students will be assessed on their capability to identify promising business lines and embedding that ideas in compelling storytelling.

The course has been designed around three main blocks:

1. Design-driven competition: in this module you will learn how to interpret and steer competitive dynamics through product and service meaning lens. The module focuses especially on the following topics:

o The framework of design-driveninnovation
o Competing and leading innovation through design
o The innovation of product-service meaning
o The role of designer in innovation process
o Managing design and designers in different competitive environments

2. User analysis: in this module you will learn how to use qualitative tools to investigate user. The topics characterising the module are the following ones:

o User observation: the context of observation; the tools of observation; rapid ethnography and shadowing.

o The interview; the in-situ interview; photographic and recording shooting.
o The generative techniques of user activation:participatory design and co-design.
o The representation and visualization of user derived knowledge.

3. Creativity and design based tools: in  this module you will learn how to frame (and re-frame) a design problem and generate findings and learning to proceed along the innovation process. The module will both go through the different phases, activities and methodologies needed to transform an idea into a product-service solution to be launched in the market, and describe the organizational settings and challenges a leader has to face in managing it. The specific topics covered by the modules are the following ones:

Method

We will use the "Studio-based" learning approach. The course is fully based on a development of an real innovative project, with a brief provided by a company. Classes will be based on team-based and indivudally based interactions with the instructors and his team of assistants.