MBA in Business Design - the unconventional path

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MBA in Business Design – Walking up the unconventional path

25 Oct 2021
- admin
Business Design, Post Graduate Diploma in Management in Business Design, Two Year MBA, Two Year MBA in India

Five years ago, searching a profile of an MBA would most likely throw up an aspirant with an Engineering background. However, there has been a radical change in recent times. The industry is on the lookout for young professionals with a diverse academic background, leadership skills, ability to create strategies and models that are innovative and solve business problems. The buzzword in India Inc. has undergone a transformative change as organizations look to create business value from innovative new products, services and processes through a human centric approach in business.

In a dynamic business scenario, organizations require new skill sets and Management education has evolved to meet challenges thrown up.

What Is Business Design?

The Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto defines it as follows –

“Business Design is a human-centered approach to innovation. It applies the principles and practices of design to help organizations create new value and new forms of competitive advantage. At its core, Business Design is the integration of customer empathy, experience design and business strategy.

Pursuing an MBA in Design Thinking provides the management student/ professional with a set of tools that help organizations and managers to create more user-centered products, processes and services. The goal is to foster desirability in customers/ stakeholders. Business design looks at building sustainable business models on the framework of design thinking. The design thinking process is an iterative understanding of the user and then building innovative solutions around their needs and wants. To sum up, MBA in Business Design looks at entrepreneurs and managers to nurture value for their organization through a design thinking mindset.

The Business Design Process

The process of MBA in business design builds on a series of assumptions, building prototypes, testing and evaluating hypotheses, iterating and bringing changes through tests.

User Empathy being foremost, the non-linear process driven approach follows the sequence of definition of issues through –
- Brainstorming – Defining a problem as a problem with a human-centric approach.
- Ideate – Viewing the problem at hand from alternate angles and finding viable solutions.
- Prototyping – Manufacturing a number of inexpensive versions of the same product or features of the product with the objective of finding solutions to the problem statement.
- Testing – Rigorously testing the prototype to identify the best solutions for the problem set. This stage could also throw up a set of new problem statements.
- Implementation – Creating a sustainable business model to implement the chosen/ shortlisted solution.
MBA In Business Design – Importance in Modern Day Business

Conventional managers design business models that are a mix of their perception and learning of traditional management techniques. While this approach has been followed successfully in the past and could be good starting points, more often than not, they lack a human centric approach and empathy. Solutions have to transform a value proposition into value creation for business by investing in human relations. The dynamic nature of business requires ideas to be made into sustainable business models to create value for all stakeholders – the business, society and the consumer.

The long-term survival and growth of an organization is only possible through adoption of a process driven empathetic approach that focuses on all stakeholders – internal and external.

Thus, Business Design helps businesses to effectively –
- Tackle undefined problems/ challenges
- Discovering latent and unsatisfied needs of stakeholders
- Creating areas of opportunity through a reiterative generation of new ideas
Modern day managers should look to bring value to the table with emerging skills to meet challenges and create opportunities. Management education can play an important role in bridging the needs of the business and community by integrating a mindset that looks at problem solving with a new perspective.

Traditional MBA VS MBA In Business Design

Most b schools have designed their curricula around business administration, and thus often view business practice with an administrative perspective. Business practice is taught with a perspective that is focused on goals, efficiency, productivity, and financial management. Marketing strategies are directed at the customer with the objective to align with corporate goals.

On the other hand, an MBA in Business Design focuses on improving the customers lives. The functional tools of management like financial management, marketing management etc are directed at the customer with a human centric approach. It draws on a mix of social science, design and strategy to create business value. A successful adoption of this approach leads to a synergy in value creation for all stakeholders – customers, society as well as organizations.

MBA In Business Design – Walking the Unconventional Path

After four years of graduation, the resume sometimes begins looking predictable. Then, many ambitious aspirants start looking at management education as a launchpad in the world of business. With the plethora of MBA courses on offer, the young aspirants look to break the clutter by choosing a programme that offers something in addition to the conventional. An MBA, that offers a highly innovative approach, is scalable, as well as financially rewarding is the answer.

The PGDM degree in Design thinking offered at SOIL Institute of Management, looks at a better way to creatively designing new products/ services or to modify or extend existing ones.

The PGDM degree in Design thinking teaches a dynamic and practical approach to decision making that is un-conventional and customer centric. The approach is multidimensional and can find application in redefining internal processes besides creating/ solving external problem statements.

At SOIL, a world-class curriculum in Business Design for the 2-year PGDM empowers and inspires young leaders to take on the challenge of managing the fast-transitioning businesses. To meet the expectations from new leaders –
- Acquiring new skills,
- Ability to collaborate and
- Agility to adapt to new environment
requires a certain mindset that can be enabled by design thinking.

Organizations are also focusing on values like creativity, empathy, eagerness and capacity to learn new skills, the ability to collaborate effectively to create new and inspiring stories, intuition and the agility to adapt to today’s fast-changing environment. This is where the integration of ‘liberal arts’ becomes crucial.

School of Business Design integrates Design Thinking, Management and Liberal Arts to unleash the creative potential of students and create truly well-rounded, future-ready leaders.

Dive right in and explore further about our unique, flagship program MBA in Business Design.

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