The humanities of design thinking: taking innovation and collaboration to a deeper level. From the article:

IDEO Executive Chair Tim Brown describes design thinking as “a human-centered approach to innovation” integrating “the needs of people, the possibilities of technology and the requirements of business success.” News stories highlight its ascendancy in everything from The Stanford D School’s increasing prominence to long-established businesses, such as IBM or Fidelity, turning to design thinking’s promise of profitable products and bottom-line results….

Design thinking may be a way forward for liberal learning, but liberal learning is a way to deepen design thinking and turn it toward truly humanistic ends at a time when the need for such thinkers and doers has never been greater. Only by more richly integrating the norms and practices of liberal arts colleges might design thinking reach its greatest potential and deliver its highest benefit to society….

Brown’s recognition that design thinking is a “human-centered” approach likewise points to how the study of the humanities is an essential part of fully realizing the aspirations of design thinking. The transformational claims made by adherents to design thinking require an inward turn — those deeper and frankly more difficult investments in empathy, dialogue with different perspectives and original reflection that the best in liberal learning models and engenders. While design thinking expands one’s potential for creativity and innovation — for what one can do — liberal learning expands who one can be and challenges one to the wider possibilities of human imagination and formation.

h/t Libby and Art (@SmartColleges)