INTEGRATING DESIGN THINKING INTO THE WAY WE TEACH BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

Business education has been criticized for not being capable of properly teaching ethical values and lack of relevance. One functional remedy for these problems can be design thinking. The purpose of this paper is present how design thinking –approaching business problems as designers approach design problems can be integrated into the way how business management is taught. Although design thinking has been around for more than two decades, initial prospects of the concept are yet to be fully realized. Design thinking requires students to have project management mentality, enhanced collaborative skills, and exceptional curiosity. Design thinking is not just about new product development, it is rather a mental process through which wicked problems are solved interactively. For indoctrinating students with design thinking, first-year undergraduate students were given a design challenge which requires designing a storyboard for a Pokémon Go like, augmented reality (AR) mobile/video game. Students were asked to integrate the business management curriculum into the process. As part of the design challenge, students had to work in already-assigned groups, write the storyboard, and finally present their game in front of their classmates and a group of external evaluators within a strict timeframe. The paper reports on how students approached the design challenge, provide examples from their presentations and their feedback on the cognitive, attitudinal, and interpersonal development. Overall, the paper will provide the audience with a relatively novel approach in integrating design thinking into our teaching efforts.