Thanks to ACE researcher Dr. Judy Matthews attracting her to QUT, we could enjoy a speech by Jeanne Liedtka at the Vice-Chancellor’s Forum on Monday, 26 September 2016. Jeanne is Professor at the Darden Graduate School of Management, University of Virginia.
Her speech was on “design thinking”, especially in the context of innovation. The design thinking movement challenges social scientists not to stop at academic publication of their findings, but to translate them into a toolkit that practitioners actually can and will use. Liedtka has previously promoted this approach in her books The Catalyst, Designing for Growth: A design thinking tool kit for managers, and Solving Business Problems with Design Thinking: Ten Stories of What Works. At the closing of the event ACE Director Per Davidsson took the podium to deliver the thanks to Professor Liedka. Per exemplified the impact design thinking can have with the Business Model Canvas—which may do not even know is an academic product—and reminded about the recent visit to QUT and ACE by one of its creators, Professor Yves Pigneur. Some of the background of this success story is revealed in this conversation between Yves, Per, and ACE Deputy Director, Professor Paul Steffens. While being self-critical on behalf on mainstream social science in his concluding remarks, Per also pointed out that input from such research are an important building block in performing the low cost experiments that can lead to a design-based solution that works.
The links to Jeanne Liedtka’s presentation can be found here:
Part 1 link is https://youtu.be/2fEIG-M8oUo
Part 2 link is https://youtu.be/Fcswyx5PvyY