In 2026, after nearly 90 years, the Institute of Design was folded into Illinois Tech's School of Design & Society.
This website is an archive of the impactful and inspirational work produced by the ID community before that transition.

László Moholy-Nagy opened the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937, treating design as a discipline that was teachable, testable, and consequential. Nine decades on, its scope had widened from the things people use to the systems they depend on: hospitals, government agencies, classrooms, supply chains, digital platforms. Along the way, ID community members developed the published research, methods, and frameworks that designers rely on every day.

Chief among them is human-centered design: close attention to how people actually live, and advocacy for what that research reveals. It shaped designers who are comfortable with complexity and ambiguity: curious, rigorous, inclusive, and stubbornly optimistic about design's ability to change the systems that shape our lives.

To every one of them, who taught, studied, built, critiqued, and stayed late in the studio: thank you, and keep designing.

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Business Design

Business Design

Practical understanding of how businesses create and appropriate value across supply chain and stakeholder networks.

“
Course offers an opportunity to think like a business while incorporating [the] human and society-centered solutions ID is good at.
—ID alumni

Objective & Outcomes

In this course, students will develop a practical understanding of how business models are used to create appropriate value for participants in a value web, such as core business, its customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. Students will work together through the semester to explore and develop new business model concepts in diverse industry and social sectors. Topics include value proposition, value creation, delivery, and capture. We will explore competitive and cooperative approaches to creating economic and social value.

Upon completing this course, students will be able to demonstrate how a business can create and allocate value across a web of participants and effectively communicate the business model to win supporters.

Typical Schedule

  • Session 1: Course Introduction: Business models, theories of the firm
  • Session 2: What Is Value?
  • Session 3: Value Creation: How & with whom
  • Session 4: Value Ecosystems: Partnerships
  • Session 5: Value Capture: Finances
  • Session 6: Financing Your Business
  • Session 7: Course Wrap-Up: Presentations

See all MDes Courses