The demands placed on today\u27s organizations and their managers suggest that we have to develop pedagogies combining analytic reasoning with a more exploratory skill set that design practitioners have embraced and business schools have traditionally neglected. Design thinking is an iterative, exploratory process involving visualizing, experimenting, creating, and prototyping of models, and gathering feedback. It is a particularly apt method for addressing innovation and messy, ill-structured situations. We discuss key characteristics of design thinking, link design-thinking characteristics to recent studies of cognition, and note how the repertoire of skills and methods that embody design thinking can address deficits in business school education

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This paper evaluates the internal and external validity of 58 work experiments-e.g., job enrichment, participative management, and autonomous group studies. The experiments are classified according to their independent and dependent variables; then each study's research design is evaluated in terms of various threats to internal and external validity. The results show that the attitudinal and performance improvements reported in the experiments are questionable but not altogether implausible. The findings of the studies appear to be generalizable to a wide range of populations and settings. Several suggestions for the improvement of research in this field are presented in light of the results of this critique.

What makes a seasoned group of faculty members sit up straight and learn something remarkable? It happens when the members go through a process to develop a new product and realize that what (should) happen is not what does happen and that the difference comes from the “aha moments” along the way. In this article, the authors track the development of a new venture start up—of a young entrepreneurial business school, lacking regional or national image, and the process faculty members experienced in creating a highly differentiated potentially brand-creating new executive MBA program. Specifically, they reflect on the design and development phase of “what happened” and “what really happened,” which emerged through a series of “aha moments.” Along the way, the program's designers and deliverers offer insights and lessons relating to the process itself and examine the application of management theories to a new academic venture.