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Top1. Introduction
Design Thinking as a tool for creativity, innovation and a human-centered approach to problem-solving, has a broad spectrum of applications to industry, research and academics (Brown and Wyatt, 2010; Meinel and Leifer, 2010). Design Thinking is the process of raising several questions, brainstorming to identify the most appropriate ones towards innovation (Wylant, 2006). Design Thinking as a practical toolkit for innovation was examined by Tschimmel, (2012). Teaching-learning experience in business schools need a broader, focused approach and should blend both problem-solving and humanistic skills. The social, emotional and cognitive intelligence competencies need to be brought out (Dunne and Martin, 2006; Boyatzis, and Saatcioglu, 2008; Bharathi and Joseph, 2017), to prepare students for addressing business solutions in the current digital era. Globalization of business has impacted internationalization of management education to a great extent (Altbach and Knight, 2007). However, the current teaching-learning pedagogies of business schools have been critically deliberated primarily due to the varying degrees of industry relevance, the widening gap between theory and practice, resulting in career on-boarding delays (Bennis and O’Toole, 2005; Mintzberg, 2004; Pfeffer & Fong 2004; Gaikwad and Bharathi, 2018). Business Management education should target development of competencies than just skill development, to enhance the employability and sustaining the students’ capabilities in the career life cycle (Azevedo et al., 2012). Information Technology brings in higher degrees of pedagogical flexibility in both teaching and learning (Ladyshewsky, and Taplin, 2013).
We draw research motivation of this study from the fact that there are numerous research interests and avenues for exploring innovative teaching-learning methods, to enhance students’ engagement and thought processes. In the recent past Design Thinking has been exciting not only in industry but also in academia to explore creative ways of learning and problem-solving.
Keeping the above perspectives in mind, we focus on the following research questions (RQ):
Based on the research questions stated above, we define the objectives of this paper as follows:
This objective is accomplished by defining the end-to-end process of planning the Design Thinking course in the techno-managerial MBA program, explaining each step of the Design Thinking process in detail and illustrating the relevance of unique activities in each phase of the Design Thinking process.
This objective is accomplished by conducting an empirical survey of the students’ learning experience as an outcome of the Design Thinking course.
The techno-managerial MBA is offered by sectoral business schools. Unlike general business schools (offering specialization in finance, HR, marketing and operations), sectoral business schools offer MBA programs which fulfill talent requirements of specific industry domains including Information Technology, Hospitality, Telecom, Healthcare and so on.