Distance Learning

Stanford Offers Online Program in Design Thinking

• By Michael Hart
• 10/20/14

The Stanford Center for Professional Development will now offer its program on design thinking and team-building via a series of interactive online videos.

The Stanford University program allows participants, colleagues in companies or organizations, the chance to work face to face in live workshops, explore engineering and design methods pioneered at Stanford and come up with their own principles and tactics for improving design thinking.

Perry Klebahn and Jeremy Utley, directors of executive education at the center, will conduct each online workshop. The workshops are a series of interactive online videos in which Klebahn and Utley lead participants — watching the videos together from their own workplace — through hands-on exercises in which they use real challenges from their own organizations.

With the online program, participants are encouraged to move around the rooms they are in — take risks, try new behaviors — and work together to generate creative solutions.

A companion workbook includes tools and step-by-step instructions that, in conjunction with the online video series, is designed to help organizations build environments in which ideas and inspiration are encouraged.

The Stanford Center for Professional Development is an arm of Stanford University that provides working professionals with access to research and teaching in the School of Engineering and related academic departments. Qualified individuals not only have access to programs like Stanford Innovation at Work but also master's degree and certification programs.

Anybody interested in learning more about using design thinking tools can participate in the program's first webinar, "Analogous Inspiration: How to Get Great Ideas From the Most Unlikely Places," Monday, November 3 at 10 am Pacific.

For more information or to enroll, go to innovationatwork.standford.edu.