What can great designers teach great managers? For us, this question became the focus first of research, then of workshops, a book, educational programs, and now a school-wide initiative.

Every form, policy, process, and interaction in your organization has been designed. Whether with intention or by accident, a human being shaped how it would look, feel, change, and interact. Those choices were approved, either explicitly or implicitly, and have come to be accepted parts of the world. There is no question that managers design. But how can managers excel at design and what tools do they need? How consciously will managers execute design responsibilities and how skillfully can they use design to achieve their organization's goals?

Designing permeates organizations because complex problems without clear recipes, stopping rules, or decision criteria proliferate. Thinking beyond obvious solutions can provide ever more advantage to those capable of doing it.

The Weatherhead School is an AACSB-accredited school of management first established in 1939. It has long been an innovator in management education, establishing the first advanced degrees in Organization Behavior and Operations Research. We have intentionally chosen to define ourselves as a school of management rather than as a school of business and many of our faculty and graduates make important contributions to the non-profit, government, and entrepreneurial sectors as well as to traditional businesses.

It matters to us that our education and research efforts help people design better solutions for organizations and societies. To this end, we educate and develop managers in corporations and not-for-profit institutions who combine rigorous analytic skills, creativity, and a bias for action — all with the designer's mindset.

With our center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit (BAWB) the School is also at the forefront of developments in sustainability and world betterment.

Every department in the Weatherhead School and many others around Case Western Reserve University, as well as associates at other universities, institutions, and businesses contribute to our thinking and our programs. Some of them are:

richard j. boland, jr.

I research how people design and use information. I am fascinated by how individuals create and interpret representations. I also enjoy designing novel forms of representation. One example is Seed, a tool for drawing cause loop diagrams and transforming them into a robust mathematical simulation, using only sparse qualitative data.

Another example is the Cycle Model for visualizing the flows of materials, money and information in a financial accounting system. Working with Fred Collopy and Julia Grant, we have used his Imager visual music tool to design the Business Animator, which represents the financial health of a firm more effectively than financial statements or graphs. The Business Animator does this without the use of numbers, relying instead on color and motion overlaid on the cycle model.

My involvement with Frank O. Gehry during the design and construction of our Peter B. Lewis Building expanded my appreciation for the power of design, and opened exciting new topics in organizational research.

richard buchanan

Before coming to Weatherhead I served as the head of school for ten years at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design. I have taught design theory focusing on communication design and industrial design, but also extend design into new areas of application such as interaction and organization design.

I edit Design Issues, an international journal of design history, theory, and criticism published by MIT Press and am the president of the Design Research Society based in the United Kingdom.

bo carlsson

I am the Director of the Executive Doctor of Management (EDM) Program and Frank Tracy Carlton Professor of Economics. I received my B.A. in Economics from Harvard College and my Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University. Previously I was a Research Associate and Associate Director of the Industrial Institute for Economic and Social Research (IUI) in Stockholm, Sweden.

I have published over 20 books and numerous articles in industrial economics, small business and entrepreneurship, technological change, and industrial policy. My current research interests include the digital economy, entrepreneurship, technology transfer, intellectual property management, and the nature and role of technological innovation systems in economic growth. A particular focus in my work is on the design of public policy in each of these areas, especially in the formation of innovation systems and industry clusters.

fred collopy

I have designed computer software for personal information management (The Desk Organizer, published by Warner Communications), for time-series forecasting (Rule-Based Forecasting, a program to integrate statistical methods and human judgment that outperformed alternatives in the M-3 Forecasting Competition), and for playing abstract graphics in the way that musicians play sounds (Imager). My experiences in software design and management practice led me to wonder what great designers have to teach great managers about dealing with complex and open-ended situations. That question in turn prompted me and my colleagues to host workshops to bring designers and managers together to explore issues of mutual interest. One of the workshops led to our book Managing as Designing (published by Stanford University Press).

I am Professor and Chair of the Information Systems Department in the Weatherhead School of Management, and Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University. I completed my PhD in Decision Sciences at the Wharton School. In addition to almost three decades in research and teaching I have been involved in several start-ups and have worked at and consulted with companies as large as IBM, KeyBank, and Prince Sports.

dan cuffaro

I believe that design can transform regional economies and Cleveland is uniquely positioned to lead the movement. As a co-founder of the District of Design initiative, I have had an opportunity to lead the process of defining assets, developing a strategy and rallying the community around creating 'The Milan of the Midwest.' As a professor I'm fortunate enough to work with some of the top creative talent in the US and collaborate with some of the worlds leading design studios. I am the former Director of Design at Altitude, Inc., an award-winning product development firm in Boston MA. I've won several IDSA/Business Week IDEA awards for my work with Clients such as DEWALT and Symbol Technologies, and I hold several patents. I have written for Innovation Magazine, The Design Management Institute Journal, and co-authored the book Process, Materials and Measurements. I've lectured in Mexico, The United Kingdom, and around the US. I continue to consult in the areas of design, strategy and urban planning.

I am the Chair of the Design Environment at The Cleveland Institute of Art and the Head of the Industrial Design Department, where I am also an Associate Professor.

dale flowers

I am an associate professor of operations management. In the 1970's, I designed and wrote a software package that helped the Consumer Products Division of Texas Instruments save over $3M in direct labor for a $180M Division. I also Co-Designed the first Business Decisions Library for their TI-58/59 model programmable calculators. In a third major effort for Texas Instruments and later General Electric, I designed and implemented sequential sampling algorithms for incoming inspection plans that resulted in my receiving the 1981 AIIE Transactions Development and Application Award from the Institute of Industrial Engineers. In the 1980's I led a team that designed the highly acclaimed Storm software package for doing quantitative modeling on PCs. In 1990, it was nominated for the prestigious Lanchester Prize, and had a multi-billion dollar impact in industry. I am currently working on the design and development of two decision support systems. One focuses on single copy operations for newspapers, and promises to have an environmental effect by reducing the excess production of unneeded papers. The second focuses on improving the efficiency and customer service for multiple-product family manufacturing operations. My work focuses on both the content of the design for functionality, and the end user aspects of the design to ease acceptance.

ron fry

I am an associate professor and chairman of our department of organizational behavior which is consistently ranked by the Financial Times as one of the top three OB departments in the world. I am a co-creator of the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) theory and method which is particularly applicable to designing large, multi-stakeholder dialogues and decision-making. I apply the AI Summit methodology to whole system strategic thinking, strategic action, re-structuring, and renewal at the organiztion, community, and societal levels. My recent work in the field includes designing multi-party engagements for a variety of systems including Akzonobel, US Navy, Brazilian Federation of Industries, Roadway Express, World Vision, Greater Houston Behavioral Health Care Association, and Arcelor-Mittal. These projects involved designing generative comversations leading to change iniatives for groups of 300 - 5000. My most recent books include, Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Approach to Building Cooperative Capacity (Taos, 2006) and The Handbook of Transformative Cooperation (Stanford University Press, 2007).

julia grant

My research interests include developing a greater understanding of how to effectively use financial information about a firm. My most recent work in this area, in cooperation with colleagues in Information Systems, incorporates innovative technology with a deep understanding of financial statements to help design and develop a visual, dynamic tool for quickly understanding the financial condition of a firm over time. These interests have also led me to research examining issues around the design of executive compensation plans, investment in human resources, the reports of financial analysts, and the disclosure policies of corporations. I have also published papers applying game theoretic social dilemma settings and their effects on group and policy outcomes.

kalle lyytinen

My passion is the design of new systems and related organizational capabilities. In the 90's I led the research team that developed and implemented MetaEdit+ which is the leading domain modeling and metaCASE platform globally. I was also involved in the design of the first mobile services in the world including the first ring tone service in the world for Radiolinja, Finland in 1998.

I am the Iris S. Wolstein professor of Management Design. I have published nearly 200 scientific articles and conference papers and edited or written eleven books on topics related to nature of information systems, system design, large scale design requirements, method engineering, organizational implementation of computer-based systems, risk assessment, computer supported cooperative work, technology standardization, and ubiquitous computing. I am currently involved in research into technology induced radical innovation in software development, information technology innovation in the architecture, engineering and construction industry, requirements discovery and modeling for large scale systems, and the adoption of broadband wireless services in the U.K., South Korea and the U.S.

craig nard

I am the Tom J.E. and Bette Lou Walker Professor of Law and have a secondary appointment in the Department of Information Systems at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University School. I am also a senior lecturer at the World Intellectual Property Organization Academy at the University of Torino, Italy, and is a frequent lecturer at various European universities, including Bocconi University in Milan and the University of Barcelona. Much of my work is interdisciplinary and explores the role of intellectual property rights &mdash particularly patents &mdash in designing intellectual property strategies. An important point that I try to convey is that intellectual property strategy is business strategy, and that IP is a strategic business asset that can be leveraged to create value and intellectual asset formation in the marketplace. But the design of an IP portfolio and how it is leveraged are dependent on a sophisticated business model, including market identification, value assessments, and a strong sense of the competitive landscape.

jagdip singh

I am the H.Clark Ford Professor of Marketing at the Weatherhead School of Management. My research focuses on issues of designing effective human and technology-mediated interfaces between organizations and consumers including frontline boundaries, market networks, and bottom up learning in organizational communities for effective customer relationships.

youngjin yoo

I am Associate Professor of MIS at Temple University, and an affiliate faculty member at Case Western Reserve University and the Viktoria Institute, Sweden. Currently, I am studying the role of materiality, heterogeneity, and locality in the design of digitized artifacts. In particular, I am obsessed with the idea of new materiality as a consequence of digitizing mundane artifacts and how it challenges the way we think about design and design process. I am also studying the consequences of digitization of artifacts on the identity of designers. These things are discussed on my blog at youngjiyoo.com.