Harvard Business School Online is announcing a new certificate course taught by Srikant Datar, Dean of Harvard Business School, called Design Thinking and Innovation. The course will help leaders be more inventive and creative in their approach to strategic initiatives and problem-solving.
Datar, the George F. Baker Professor of Administration, has held many leadership roles at Harvard Business School and Harvard University during his more than 25 years on the faculty, including serving as chair of the Harvard Innovation Labs. He became dean in January 2021 and was recently granted a Padma Shri award, one of the most prestigious civilian honors in India that recognizes leaders for their distinguished service.
According to Datar, “Entrepreneurial leaders must prioritize experimentation and constant iteration to effectively solve business problems in a consumer-centric way. I hope this course helps business leaders think more creatively, so they’re better positioned to achieve the highest levels of success for themselves and their organizations.”
Design Thinking and Innovation is designed for professionals at all levels of management and will teach them entrepreneurial design thinking principles and cognitive frameworks they can leverage to guide their organizations through strategic development and complex business challenges. The course uniquely combines design thinking with structured approaches to ideation—such as task unification, subtraction, and attribute dependency—to help learners break common mental blocks to creativity and refine their innovations’ attributes to better match customer value propositions. It will help learners build stronger strategies, products, and teams, and create an optimal environment to inspire innovation and collaboration.
“We’re delighted that Dean Datar has chosen to create this course, and we know our learners will gain tremendously from the innovative approach he brings to research and his wide-ranging experience,” says HBS Online Executive Director Patrick Mullane. “It’s particularly exciting because innovation in online education is one of his most important priorities in leading HBS in this new era.”