The Sauder d-studio: Design Thinking in Action

Moura Quayle, Professor, Sauder School of Business
Martina Valkovicova, President, MBA Students at Sauder (student partner)
Jen Matchett, Commerce Undergraduate Society Sustainability Group (student partner)
Melissa Delucci, Commerce Undergraduate Society Sustainability Group (student partner)
Lesley Treleaven, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Sydney (Pacifica Project partner)
Ron Kellett, Professor, Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) (faculty partner)
James Tansey, Centre for Sustainability and Social Innovation (Sauder partner)

Success comes in business by doing something better. Diverse interests, duties and opportunities of today’s markets mean that “better” is an increasingly complex concept. Sustainability layers in long-term obligations. Enter design thinking as a problem-solving approach: part creative-thinking for new ideas, part innovative thinking for new ways of using existing information and systems.

Sustained success will only occur within a larger organizational culture of research, design literacy, design-thinking skills training, and values-based evaluation, reinvention and renewal. Students, the business community, and an increasingly engaged public demand an integrative, participatory approach.

The Sustainability Business By Design’ Studio offers students, faculty and staff a physical and virtual collaborative space to apply design principles to develop and prototype tools, processes and activities that foster an embedded culture of sustainability.

The UBC-University of Sydney Pacifica Partnership allows cross-fertilization of ideas, experiences and approaches and to work on solutions for the contemporary global village.

Moura Quayle, Professor, Sauder School of Business
Martina Valkovicova, President, MBA Student Society (student partner)
Nikolina Babic, VP Student Engagement, Commerce Undergraduate Society (student partner)
Wendy Bishop, Director, Sauder Alumni Relations
Ron Kellett, Professor, School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA)
Kara Pecknold, Instructor, Emily Carr University and Art and Design
Ronna Chisholm, Business Director, Dossier Creative
Don Chilsolm, Creative Director, Dossier Creative

Design thinking has begun to make its mark at Sauder thanks to TLEF Year 1. The B.Comm d•studio, the design-thinking-embedded MBA Integrated Core, and the emerging Community of Practice and d•studio website have helped to create a more diverse learning environment and to respond to the need for collaboration and creativity in the business workplace.

In Year 2 the d•studio will focus on Design Thinking In Action by documenting illustrations of design thinking from the business community to use in the curriculum and on the websfte. We will build a set of learning modules that will embed design thinking and studio pedagogy into specific business discipline classes: Finance/Design Thinking, Organizational Change/Design Thinking, and Sustainability Management/Design Thinking. These activities will deepen and broaden the Community of Practice, which will be further enriched through a Design Thinking in Action Speaker series with our Alumni Relations partner and via our d•studio website.