Towards Evidence-Based Design and Innovation Education
Harvard · MIT · Cambridge · 2011–present
Role · Creator, researcher
Most design and innovation education runs on tradition and hunch. This project asked: what would it take to teach the way we research?
The first phase analyzed more than 300 projects from leading design firms — IDEO, Continuum, and others — examining the real-world complexity of innovation work that is multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural, and multi-organizational. The patterns that predicted successful outcomes became the structural backbone of every course I have built since.
The second phase is a six-year longitudinal study of project-based experiential design and innovation courses, tracking what students retain, transfer, and apply years after the class ends. The findings have shaped each successive course from Innovators’ Practice to Design Survivor to Integrated Design and many since then.
Supported by the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching, the MIT International Design Center, and the University of Cambridge.