INTEGRATIVE THINKING AND YOUR CAREER IN...
Design

Rotman students receive a solid grounding in all the functional areas of business: Marketing, Strategic Management, Organizational Behaviour, etc. But they also learn how to think beyond them to consider the big picture, approaching each challenge with creativity, a willingness to consider multiple perspectives, and the ability to build new and better models. It’s a groundbreaking approach that we call Integrative Thinking, and it can help you shape your business — and the world— for the better.

A few years ago, Dean Roger Martin said: “We are on the cusp of a design revolution in business, and as a result, managers don’t need to understand designers better, they need to become designers." Since then, under the leadership of Heather Fraser, Director of the Rotman Business Design Initiative, we have developed a unique program that merges the practices of business and design at our strategy-innovation lab, DesignWorks.

Meet some recent graduates who are putting Integrative Thinking to work in the world of Design:


Chihiro Hosoe (MBA), Senior Design Analyst, Frog Design, Shanghai: “As I work at a U.S. innovation consulting firm in Shanghai, I get to work with people with very different work and cultural backgrounds. Naturally, our ideas are very different, and they often clash. The truth is, we all have limited perspectives that come from our past experiences, so thinking alone limits the possibilities for innovation. Integrative thinking helps me not to ignore ideas that initially don’t look attractive, explore the reason behind the argument, and finally come up with another idea that none of us could come up with if we were thinking alone.”



David Aycan (MBA), Design Consultant, IDEO, Palo Alto, California : “As a business designer at IDEO, I am asked to help answer tough and ambiguous questions for our clients and suggest ways that they can stay relevant moving forward. This means looking at people and markets in new ways. An Integrative Thinking approach helps me respect and work with not only my teammates, but with people in different roles within and outside of our client organization. Absorbing and 'synthesizing' a broad set of inputs and perspectives helps my colleagues and I come up with unique and differentiated solutions for clients.”

Design firms that have recruited at Rotman in the past two years include:

• Visit the website for the student-run Rotman Business Design Council.
• Visit the Rotman DesignWorks website.
• Read some of Dean Roger Martin’s articles on Design Thinking.
• Review our Design-related elective courses: The Opposable Mind; Design Practicum: Business Innovation Lab; and Innovation, Foresight and Business Design.
• Review our Integrative Thinking courses, compulsory and elective.
• Find out about our Major in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.