This site is about an ongoing experiment in MBA education. It shares what I have been developing at Said Business School at the University of Oxford, through an elective I have been teaching since 2005.

Now called the MBA elective in Designing Better Futures (previously Design Leadership), this elective gives students opportunities to explore, experience and understand what would be involved in bringing approaches from design and the arts to management and entrepreneurship. It is particularly focussed on engaging with the multiple challenges facing global and local communities.

Over the years I have developed dialogues with several other educators trying out similar things including Fred Collopy and Dick Boland at Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University; Youngjin Yoo and James Moustefellos at Fox School of Business, Temple University; Ulla Johansson in the Business Design Lab at the University of Gothenburg; Moura Quayle at the Saunder School of Business’s D-studio; Daved Barry at Copenhagen Business School; Roger Martin at the Rotman School of Management in Toronto; and with others working in design schools with related perspectives such as Alison Prendiville at London College of Communication, and Jamer Hunt and Cameron Tonkinwise at Parsons, The New School for Design.

Some business schools have made significant commitments to exploring these ideas. Said Business School has not made as much of an investment, but I still think this blog offers something to educators, researchers and students – even if only how to wriggle around institutional and disciplinary constraints.

Some of the posts here have already been published on my other blog, Design leads us where exactly?. I decided to pull them here together in one place to make it easier to review what I have been doing and show how I have changed the elective based on student feedback, exposure to new ideas and reflection on what works and what does not.

Although for five years I was on the faculty of the school as the Clark Fellow in Design Leadership, I am now an associate fellow continuing to teach this elective and contributing to other courses such as the MBA Entpreneurship Project and MSc Major Programme Management. My main focus is my work in my own innovation consultancy Fieldstudio, and work in public sector innovation with Taylor Haig (London) and the Policy Lab (Boston). I also continue to write and publish peer-reviewed academic research and am a regular international speaker and workshop leader.


Contact details

Lucy Kimbell, Associate fellow, Said Business School and director, Fieldstudio, London

My personal email is hello /at/ lucykimbell.com

Personal website http://www.lucykimbell.com

Twitter @lixindex