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Design Think @ Innovation U Many business students are learning that innovation requires more than creativity. It also demands a clear understanding and fierce appreciation of diverse, often conflicting, perspectives. by Tricia Bisoux worked with two design students and two engineering students to develop a ventilated truck-driving shoe to improve truckers' circulation after long hours on the road. "I wanted that cross-disciplinary experience," says Boone, who now works as M director of market development for an electronic display company in Pittsburgh. "You can't just put a product on the market and hope the market wants it. It took our team's combination of perspectives to discover what truckers need, not just what business thinks they need." Boone is among a growing number of business students who enroll in multi- disciplinary courses in innovation and design—to learn to adopt the skills and tools of "design thinking." In these courses, students quickly learn that creativity alone may not result in ideas that make good business sense. Instead, they discover that it often takes collaboration across functional disciplines to see all the possibilities and develop economically viable business solutions. By working with their counterparts in design, engineering, and other disciplines, business students don't just broaden their perspectives and advance their problem- solving skills, say the educators behind these courses. They also begin to appreciate the value a designer's creativity and an engineer's precision can add to their own views on business. Special Teams Cross-disciplinary collaboration is a hallmark of innovation, says Laurie Weingart, a professor of organizational behavior and theory at Tepper. Yet, it can be one of the most difficult hurdles for students to clear. "Students often lack an understanding of the language and thought processes of other disciplines," she says. "And people often resist what they don't understand." Weingart taught Boone's course in integrated product development with two professors of marketing, a professor of engineering, and a professor of design. In the Tepper course, she explains, the first step is to help students appreciate the different skills and viewpoints their teammates have to offer. In fact, her students' first assignment is to go out together for drinks and social interaction. "Students enjoy the assignment, but they often don't know why they're doing it," says Weingart. "But later in the semester, when the pressure's on, they realize why they needed to understand each other better." Mitzi Montoya-Weiss, professor of marketing innovation at North Carolina State University's College of Management in Raleigh, agrees that students gain a new understanding of the innovation process when they realize what other disciplines have to offer. She saw that process in action when a student team in one of her courses was developing a new single-dose inhaler device for asthmatics. 24 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007 ary Boone came to the MBA program at Carnegie Mellon Univer- sity's Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as an engineer with an interest in product development. To get a more complete picture of the product design process, she enrolled in Tep- per's 14-week course on integrated product development. Boone