We've already received more applications this year than last and, with the January 15th deadline fast approaching, we expect more than double the applications as last year. However, our class size isn't growing (it's still set at 30). This means the competition will get even tougher. Get your applications in pronto and good luck.

Today is the first day of the new semester. This semester, our students are building on their experiences from the first semester with four new courses.

Sustainability Studio, Spring 2009

While sustainability is a theme throughout every course in the Design MBA program, this studio focuses exclusively on developing solutions that directly affect financial, natural, and human capital, as well as the systems that govern them. This course takes an in-depth look at various frameworks and approaches to sustainable development, using both historical and contemporary examples. Throughout the semester, students use practical tools and techniques for identifying issues, developing solutions, troubleshooting problems, measuring progress, and implementing organizational change.

The course consists of two projects. The first is a 4-week group assignment to evaluate a product in terms of sustainability using one or more common sustainability frameworks. The second is a group development project of either a product or service with an emphasis on solving customer and societal needs sustainably.

There are a lot of articles assigned in this class as well as several books, listed here:
• Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, by Paul Hawkin, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins
• Leading Change Toward Sustainability, by Bob Dopplet
• Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must Be Sustainable, by Nathan Shedroff

Leadership by Design, Spring 2009

As we move forward into the 21st Century, success in meeting the challenges and opportunities facing us depends on the effectiveness of those leading and managing organizations. This course invites inquiry into these fundamental societal roles and provides the opportunity to explore and develop your individual leadership and management profile.

Today's organizations are becoming more complex and require a greater reliance on interdependent work. A new leadership skill set is emerging that is based on participative management, building and maintaining relationships, and change management. In addition, tomorrow's leader/managers will be expected to exercise a more collective version of leadership, where process skills are fundamental and leadership is shared by many. This course will explore the elements of team and organizational contexts that can be "designed" to support healthy working relationships, creative innovative thinking, quality output and optimal performance. Students build on a foundation of self-awareness of management and leadership skills to apply the most current knowledge about creative problem solving, motivation, power, conflict resolution and team building with classmates. Emphasis will be given to developing communication skills, dialectic problem solving, systems thinking and pattern recognition capacities, and change management methodologies. Students will be asked to imagine and "redesign" the roles of leadership and management to meet the requirements of tomorrow's world.

Books:
• Developing Management Skills, 7th Edition, by David A Whetten and Kim S. Cameron
• Emotional and Social Competency Inventory, University Edition (ESCI-U) published by the HayGroup

Market Insight Studio, Spring 2009
"Marketing," like many business terms, has followed a trajectory from revolutionary concept... to prestigious discipline... and finally to a ubiquitous set of formulaic practices. This course seeks to re-visit, and re-imagine, marketing as a discipline rooted in and devoted to meeting the needs of people.

The purpose of the course is to introduce and apply a systematic framework for understanding and developing marketing strategy, with a particular focus on the process of uncovering and acting on people's needs.

Course topics include: basic marketing theory, target markets and segmentation, marketing systems, consumer attitudes, consumer research techniques and objectives, branding/positioning, marketing channels, the marketing environment, the marketing mix, social marketing, cause marketing and green marketing. Learners will also explore the implications of emerging marketing practice for sustainability.

Books:
• Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences, Steve Diller, Nathan Shedroff, and Darrel Rhea
• Marketing Management, twelfth edition, by Philip Kotler and Kevin Keller
• Social Marketing: Improving the Quality of Life, second edition, by Philip Kotler, Ned Roberto, and Nancy Lee
• Sustainable Marketing: Managerial-Ecological Issues, Donald A. Fuller
• Design Research; Methods and Perspectives, edited by Brenda Laurel
• Marketing Plans: How to Prepare Them, How to Use Them, fifth edition, by Malcolm McDonald, Malcolm

Business Models and Stakeholders, Spring 2009

There is no "right" or "perfect" business model for a business. Having determined the business model there is then no one way of organizing the business. Various considerations shape both the business model and the organization design decisions including the needs of the growing variety of stakeholders (for example, governments, NGOs, communities, and the media).

Beyond the stakeholders, the business models and organizations designs are shaped by the operating context (financial, social, political, legal, economic, environmental, etc.) and this, in turn influences the roles that organizations play in their world. The course discusses effective* for-profit, nonprofit, and other types of organizations in terms of their business models, stakeholders and organization designs. It also explores the similarities and differences among effective* organizations.

*As you think about this module ask yourself "What is an effective organization?"

Students will work in teams with outside organizations to analyze and develop strategies around those organization's business models and constituents. Students will work to develop a module for these organizations up to three years from now. These outside organizations range from start-ups to government agencies, to a variety of non-profits.

Books:
• Guide to Organisation Design: Creating High-Performing and Adaptable Enterprise, Naomi Stanford

This has been almost a year in the making but, today, CCA launched it's 3-year Dual Design Degree. The program combines courses from both the MBA in Design Strategy a well as the Graduate Program in Design. Over three years, students earn both degrees through an intensive weaving of the courses from both programs.

The program will enroll up to 3 students a year and students must apply and be accepted to both programs simultaneously. More info: www.cca.edu/academics/graduate/design/dualdesign