MBA vs. MiD

When I discovered the exciting hybrid between the business world and the design world back in Undergrad, I thought that I would inevitably be getting my MBA one day. After graduation I had the itch to get out of school, and get some “real-world” experience. So last year, after three years in the professional world, I made the decision to go back to graduate school. Initially my search was focused in MBA programs, as I had predicted I would do, but shortly after I started looking into the specifics of the programs I began feeling that they were too far from the type of education I was looking for. Luckily, through some intense digging, I found that a few art schools had started to build graduate design curriculum around a more business/entrepreneurial focus–and as you probably have noticed, I am now in one of those programs at University of the Arts.

I bring this topic up because of a recent article from Fast Company Design, titled: “What Both MBAs And MFAs Get Wrong About Solving Business Problems,” describing the Rotman Design Challenge, and the relevance it has to not only my decision against getting an MBA, but also to the Temple University Design Challenge I participated in with MBA students. The article captures some great points, and highlights well why the winning teams were made up of designers:

“With only 15 minutes to convince a skeptical panel of experienced professionals about a new idea that doesn’t exist in the world today, they fared significantly better than their MBA counterparts. Why? Because they shared real user insights to engage us emotionally, used narrative and stories to compel us, drew sketches and visualizations to inspire us, and simplified the complex to focus us.”

Although MBA students may have a better understanding of the profit model, the designers were able to generate buy-in by effectively communicating an innovative idea. For me, it seems that the more difficult part to master is that of the designers’, and I am happy to have made a decision to get my master’s training in the design process versus an MBA.

My experience at the Temple University Design Challenge, working on an multi-disciplinary team with MBA’s, was very beneficial and demonstrated the importance of bringing both sets of knowledge to develop an idea; however, as I experienced, and as the article reiterates, these compeitions are great for opening ”MBA eyes to the importance and value of design in solving business problems, [however] it seems that even its most forward-thinking students may not have fully digested that design is a serious pursuit that requires serious training [and] we still have a long way to go to develop business professionals who both appreciate and can engage the tools of design effectively.”

As I go through this graduate design program, I notice that the more we collaborate with the MBAs, and business-minded people, the more they realize the value of design and the design process. My hope is that soon MBA curriculum will reflect some of the types of learning we are experiencing here in design education, and as a compliment to that, designers will be able to gain relevant knowledge and skills from the MBA students we collaborate with.

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