Multidisciplinary Innovation

“

I really, really enjoyed the process of bringing our concept to life, and it was truly a design school experience. I loved that the instructor supported our craziness by helping us back it up with logic. It's easy to do blue sky thinking, but he helped us do it with realistic constraints. And that was great.

—Former student

Objective & Outcomes

As organizations face increasingly complex challenges and ambitions to innovate, their ability to collaborate across disciplines is no longer an option but a requirement. In this course, students will work with students from other disciplines around campus to learn firsthand about collaboration by engaging in design-led innovation methods to solve a real-world challenge provided by an outside organization.

The course will include approximately 16 students from different departments across Illinois Tech, including Design, Business, Architecture, Science, Engineering, and Applied Technology. Students will learn to work with team members from different disciplines, approach a given project challenge from a multidisciplinary perspective, manage time and resources to complete a project, and present collaborative ideas to external stakeholders.

Upon completing this course, students will be able to engage in primary and secondary research for design-led innovation, apply the balance breakthrough model to innovation projects, and build business and financial models for startup or innovation ideas.

Typical Schedule

Session 1: Context Setting
Session 2: Context Setting
Session 3: Research & Analysis
Session 4: Research & Analysis
Session 5: Research & Analysis
Session 6: Research & Analysis
Session 7: Mid-Term Review
Session 8: Mid-Term Review
Session 9: Synthesis
Session 10: Synthesis
Session 11: Synthesis
Session 12: Synthesis
Session 13: Storytelling
Session 14: Final Presentation