Curiosity & applied imagination
A semester-long practical course that teaches students the ability to come up with valuable new ideas, concepts, products or projects.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course teaches the steps to notice interesting problems and invent new approaches to address them. The course is meant as a sandbox for students to test out various approaches from the fields of anthropology, design thinking, action research and prototyping with the ultimate goal to create individuals who are confident in dealing with the unknown and are able to come up with new perspectives to existing situations.
It is a practical course that broadly covers the methods of creativity and imagination. Simply put, it gives students the toolkit necessary to come up with valuable insights and good ideas. It includes ways to conduct an effective analysis of a problem, ideating potential solutions in the form of action research, quick prototypes and steps required to asses the impact of their interventions – topics that broadly fall in the scope of design thinking methodologies.
This course is meant as a complement to the core subjects in the field of study of every student and is aimed at preparing future innovators to confidently pursue their creative ideas. Students will be forced to take a broad view to their field of study and consider potential opportunities within it that might result in new ventures, new initiatives, and new ideas in general.
It is 100% practical and has no exam at the end. Instead, students are going to »get their hands dirty« and try everything for themselves. They will be expected to try all the methods in practice and will be challenged with real scenarios, practical challenges, simulations or real life assignments. These are expected to be time consuming and will demand full engagement. After the course, students are expected to know exactly what steps to take when considering a new idea or when facing a problem without all the information immediately available to them. This will greatly increase their career prospects and leadership potential.
This course is meant to stimulate novel and divergent thinking, therefore grading will be highly biased towards rewarding novel concepts and will not penalize mistakes. The final grade is given to students in three tiers: Cum laude (perfect grade), Pass (second highest grade) or Fail (highest failing grade). It is fully expected every student will pass, and grading reflects this by ensuring everyone with full participation and active engagement (completion of homework tasks) will pass.
COURSE LOGISTICS AND GRADING
The course lasts throughout a semester and is convened two times per week. Every session aims to stimulate a debate among students and requires active participation in the learning simulations. Each session covers a particular topic (a method of creativity, a scenario that trains a particular tool or approach for ideation...) and together the whole semester provides an episodic overview of some ways students can approach tasks that require them to come up with new solutions. It is meant as a way to teach and train methods, practices and tools that stimulate imagination or creativity. It also encourages students to hone the practice of a curious intellectual: to strive towards having broad general knowledge in all fields – as prior knowledge about many things is the biggest prerequisite to imagination.
This course is meant to stimulate novel and divergent thinking, therefore grading is not based on exams. Instead, students will be expected to keep a diary or learning log of exploration in the form of field notes, videos or any other way that shows the progression of their learning.
Students will be given points for participation for every single exercise (and their report in the learning log) during the year. As the course will often take students into real-life conversations with stakeholders and challenge them to come up with novel approaches, it will never be expected for anyone to »find the right answer« or »solve a problem« with their intervention. The result of students' work thus does not have an effect on the grade. Instead, points will be awarded for effort, determination and perseverance. Doing one iteration and being successful with it might thus be awarded with less points than doing multiple iterations but still ending up failing. The final grades will therefore be awarded in the following way:
85% of the grade: participation during the class, taking part in every activity to the best of the student's ability
15% of the grade: attendance in the learning activities, every unexcused absence results in a decrease of the grade for 5%.
COURSE READING AND MATERIALS
As this course is covering practical, real cases, there is no assigned reading and no textbooks. Instead, students will be provided with briefing packs and handouts for every single business model that will be analyzed. Students will keep the methodologies, outlines of the activities and toolkits that will be used during the class, with the expectation they will be useful to them in their future careers.
WHO SHOULD TAKE PART IN THIS COURSE
This course is designed as an elective for undergraduate and graduate students, irrespective of their field of study or their year, but is especially aimed towards future innovators and top performers in their respective disciplines. The purpose of this course is twofold: (1) to provide key practitioners and decisionmakers in sciences a broader, but practical, understanding of creativity and imagination, and (2) to provide an opportunity for students to practice the methods which have been shown to stimulate novel thinking.
This course will bring together students from very different disciplines in order to create a group with diverse experiences. It is highly encouraged the best students take part in this course at some point during their studies, but prospective students must be aware this course expects a higher than usual level of participation and more time consuming practical assignments.
COURSE SCHEDULE
This course is held two times per week for 9 weeks throughout the semester. Typically, a topic is presented in the shape of an interactive lecture where a concrete challenge is introduced, and the following sessions are practical tutorials where the professor helps student teams to complete their projects.
Lectures and tutorials: 18 sessions of 2 hours = 36 hours
Fieldwork: students are expected to dedicate 6 hours per week, for a total of 54 hours, to complete all the activities to a sufficient standard.
Week 1
Introduction of the course: setting expectations and course outline
The value of creativity and the way a designer approaches the world
Challenge: Bring a useless object (students are invited prior to the class to bring a useless object to class for the first session). How to make it useful?
Presentation of the useless object task
Discussion: Imagination is a conscequence, not an ability
Week 2
Module one: Noticing things
Challenge: Get lost in the city and tell us a story (students are invited to go into the city without specific instructions and bring back an interesting story). Students are given some basic tools to observe the world around them and come up with insights.
Presentation of the getting lost task
Discussion: The importance of seeing things and noticing curiosities
Week 3
The skills and tools for research
Challenge: Students are given concrete research questions that can only be answered by going into the field (student teams are invited to do anything and everything necessary to find an answer). Students are given tools to conduct in person and online open source research.
Week 4
Module two: Understanding the context
The importance of taking a broader view: potential conscequences and the interconnectedness in the world
Challenge: A case study is presented and students receive roles in a simulated court/proceedings that require teams to analyse the situation, conduct further research and then present their case
Week 5
Module three: Understanding the problem
Every project, new initiative, product or innovation addresses a concrete problem or use case. It is imperative to understand it and very dangerous to ignore.
Challenge: Conduct an interview and analysis of a concrete problem and come up with a potential solution (students draw random problems that can be addressed by a new product and have to conduct a real analysis of it). Students are given practical tools and steps to conduct a high quality stakeholder interview.
Presentation of the problem interview task
Discussion: The value of doing research first and seek solutions later
Week 6
Module four: Ideating solutions through protoryping (Design thinking, lean methodologies, action research)
Designers around the world have created a methodology that suggests doing a prototype solution quickly to test the first ideas, then develop them through quick iterations
Challenge: In-class prototyping session
Methodology workshops: Methods of creativity: Human-centered design (Stanford d.School), Rapid Prototyping (Google). Students are given the opportunity to test-drive various different methodologies to come up with new ideas. They work on real-life scenarios created specifically for the class
Week 7
Module five: Evaluation and impact measurement
The need to analyse the potential impact and conduct a cost-benefit analysis to potential interventions in order to know if they are effective. Students are given various tools and approaches to analyse effectiveness of innovations. They are also introduced to methods of rationality and bayesian reasoning.
Challenge: Cognitive biases workshop and training in rationality (Students attempt to apply rational analysis to scenarios about new or proposed projects, interventions or products). Various different scenarios are presented, from social impact ventures to conspiracy theories.
Challenge: Students are given a scenario with a proposed intervention and they are expected to conduct research and present a rational analysis of it
Presentation of case study scenarios
Discussion: The value of impact measurement and analysis free of subjective opinions
Week 8
Module six: Creativity and imagination group project
How to bring all the things learned during the class together and apply it for your own project
Challenge introduction: Students are invited to come up with an individual project, service, intervention or other innovation. They are expected to outline a problem they wish to solve, conduct research prior to coming up with a solution, then prototype and iterate solutions until they are satisfied with a proposal. Students have 10 days to do this.
Tutorial session: The professor is available to students to provide feedback as they complete the project
Week 9
Conclusion of the course: final presentations and evaluation
Presentation of the student team projects
Discussion: How to apply the lessons learned in this course in real life
Course evaluation and feedback session: students are invited to provide feedback and evaluate the course
