Turning an idea into a sustainable reality requires a fundamental understanding of business, but the frameworks that guide business principles overlap, complement, and enhance design principles. This course seeks to educate students to understand business as a critical design factor- a defining constraint or liberating perspective along the same lines that other design principles are taught. The guiding principle is that design and business are inextricably linked: Design work is intrinsically linked to business and will always be at the service of business, fulfilling the need for an enterprise (profit or non-profit) whose business model is critical to its survival. Design will find new channels, new outlets, through a more complete understanding of business needs and how businesses see opportunity. Design can and should be considered as critical strategic input for business. The objective of Business Principles: Design and Entrepreneurship is for students to understand basic business vocabulary, to explore how design vocabulary and design processes overlap, complement and enhance business vocabulary, and to understand how design thinking skills can be used to identify and execute business opportunities.

Elective

Entrepreneurship--the imagining, building and sustaining of socially impactful organizations--is a creative art. It requires insights and knowledge from the humanities and the social and physical sciences, and demands self-awareness and purpose. The premise of this lecture course is that designers and artists are uniquely gifted with critical entrepreneurial qualities. This course will allow students to better understand how and where their skills and perspectives fit into the world of entrepreneurship and business. The objective of Design and Entrepreneurial Thinking is for students to understand a basic business vocabulary, to explore how design vocabulary and design processes overlap, complement and enhance business vocabulary, and to understand how design thinking skills can be used to identify and execute business opportunities. This course seeks to educate students to recognize business as a critical design factor--a defining constraint or liberating perspective-along the same lines that other design principles are taught. This course will use Harvard Business School case notes, case studies, and recent business books to highlight this thinking. Students will be introduced to basic business concepts through lectures, case studies, assignments and class discussion. Homework assignments will work off the classroom pedagogy. Topics covered will be business models, marketing, finance, and strategy.

Elective