Sunday, 15 June 2008

When bschool and dschool collide


2577706900_43ef1f1474 I love it when a plan comes together. A few weeks ago, at the Innovation Edge 08 conference, I ran into Gabriele, LBS MBA2009 (and a few other 009s), of I want to shadow Steve Jobs-blog fame. Before I knew it, the idea was born in my head to try and do a bit of rapid prototyping of our own and bring together bschool and dschool for a networking event. I roped in two of my studygroup mates from dschool, the wonderful Helena and Julea, and together we started making a plan, picked a date and set the ball rolling (well, that ball was kept rolling by Gabriele, Helena and Julea, I must admit I tried my hand at delegating on this one ;-) And this past Thursday, the two worlds collided and we had ourselves a blast! I think about 35 people showed up (including a special guest, Idris Mootee, who blogged about it here) and I think it went well. 

When people ask me about the diffferences between bschool and dschool, it's so easy to fall into cliches. And some of them are true. There are bschool people wedded to their Excel spreadsheet. And there are designers with not a commercial bone in their body. But they are extremes, and I'm finding that there are a lot more similarities than differences. The problem as I see it tends to lie in language (it is like speaking two different languagees, bschool speak and dschool lingo) and perceptions, both in large part due to the way we are educated to see the world. Once you bridge those, beautiful things happen. And I think they happened last Thursday. I had a blast and thank Gabriele, Helena and Julea. Awesome job! Here's to having some more of these events this autumn. 

PS The countdown is on, 3 more days and then I'm off to A'dam to see Bruce Springsteen, and I can't wait!

15 Jun 2008 21:44:49 | Jumping down excitedly, LBS, MADS

1 Comment

This sounds like a great idea. I haven't really seen or heard of a design school boom here in the US but I imagine it's coming soon.

Have fun at Bruce. He's one of the only reasons I stayed sane in Japan.

Posted by: Jeff D | Monday, 16 June 2008 at 04:57 PM

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