Innovation Frontiers | Institute of Design

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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institute
of desiGn

Innovation Frontiers

Introduction to basic ideas, frameworks, and capabilities of innovation initiatives.

Objective & Outcomes

This course is short but intense and instrumental for understanding the basic ideas, frameworks, and capabilities that modern design strategy and innovation programs demand. If you believe that innovation is fundamentally about creativity, the term “innovation planning” appears to make no sense. This should be your first clue that the obstacles to successful innovation live mostly in stupid assumptions and bad practices. This introductory course takes students on a brisk journey to connect ideas ranging from business planning fundamentals to modern frontiers of design and innovation planning.

Upon completing this course, students will be able to develop breakthrough and strategically oriented platform concepts.

Typical Schedule

Session 1: Thinking Like a Planner: An overview
Session 2: Planning Frameworks
Session 3: Review of Lectures & Readings, Initial Plans
Session 4: Strategy Architectures: Building sophisticated plans
Session 5: Strategic Innovation Programs: Affecting behavior
Session 6: Achieving Change & Impact