Lee Kong Chian School of Business

This course will not transform you into an innovator, but will help you hone your skills in managing the product development and innovation process. This course will familiarise you with how organisations manage the process of innovation and how they develop successful products, services and systems. The course is most valuable for those who want to work in industrial firms or do consulting work. 

Unlock your creative potential with Human-Centred Design! This course immerses you in user-focused innovation, teaching design principles from Stanford University’s Design School/IDEO framework. You'll learn to create new products, services, experiences, and business models that truly resonate with users. Design thinking is by now known as a widely accepted and impactful way for organizations to innovate. Real world organizations ranging from startups to banks and governments employ design to improve their customer experience and organizational performance. The course is divided into four main aspects, all interconnected but separately emphasized: 

(1) Human-centred design principles (e.g. empathetic user research, brainstorming, prototyping and testing), 

(2) the product or service to be designed 

(3) mindsets, attitudes and behaviors and 

(4) design contexts. Design contexts encompass the dynamic environments of humans and businesses.

 Increasingly, they include societal and sustainable concerns. Learning in the course will be hands-on, highly interactive and deeply engaging – through class interactions, team exercises, and a team project. This course has benefited both students and clients in a win-win learning environment. Each semester, we have worked with clients from different industries ranging from multi-nationals to small & medium enterprises, government agencies, start-ups and non-profit organizations. Past clients were surprised and delighted with the innovative prototype solutions designed by our student teams. Students also benefited from gaining invaluable experience using design concepts to deliver value to clients, learning from client’s feedback and exceeding their client’s expectations. 

The Capstone course allows students to apply a cross-disciplinary approach while considering both business model architecture and the formulation of business solutions. It prepares students for the complex business environment of today by emphasising the application of academic knowledge accumulated from a range of prior core courses to solving real world problems. The course develops in students an ability to: strategically position the client and its challenge within an environmental context; appropriately scope the challenge of the client; develop and execute a workplan to address the challenge; and develop solutions by establishing a fact-base through directed primary and secondary research, drawing out relevant insights through analytic review, and engaging in abstract idea generation. The course exposes students to the uncertainties and ambiguity that exists within real-world business landscapes and organisational environments of industry clients, as well as, the challenges with engaging busy business executives and convincing them and their organisation of innovative solutions that have been devised by the students that address the client’s real-world challenges. 

The core objective of the new SMU-X Transformative Leadership course is to nurture a new generation of young leaders motivated and capable of tackling intricate global and local challenges related to the nexus of ‘digital disruption, demographic change and diversity’ in an integrated, interdisciplinary fashion, providing the opportunity to integrate perceived differences between older and younger people in terms of values, communication priorities; age discrimination or the initiation of new types of social (‘digital’) behaviours transmitted from the plugged-in ‘Generation Z’ (born 1996 and after) to Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964). These three challenges (positioned at the interface of both current and future issues) are not only globally relevant but also have significant local implications for Singapore.

Embedded in the experiential SMU-X initiative, the Transformative Leadership course provides students with a unique learning opportunity to develop and implement (socially) innovative solutions to make a positive impact on business and society in close collaboration with reputable partners in business, nonprofits and government. Learners will be paired up with an external SMU-X partner to work on relevant innovative projects with real impact.

The successful completion of such transformative SMU-X projects requires learners diving deep(er) into various disciplines such as social sciences, business, political governance, public policy, demography, technology, etc. It is expected that the chosen practical challenges commissioned by SMU-X partners will ‘stretch’ students, forcing them to step out of their comfort zones and to explore the unknowns in order to make a ‘real’ difference ‘out there’ in both the social and business sectors.

In terms of effective leader development, in particular, transformative leadership, the SMU-X course design will support learners in expanding their individual capacity to be effective in leadership roles and processes. Emphasis will be put on proximal indicators of leader development such as self-views around self-concept, including leader self-awareness, leadership self-efficacy and leader. Through their SMU-X projects, students will appreciate the importance of leadership development so that they can articulate what it takes for teams and their leaders to create strong(er) alignment and high(er) levels of commitment. The latter requires interpersonal trust, care and concern as well as shared mind-sets regarding (transformative) goals and values such as the ‘real’ sharing propelled by collaborative leadership approaches.

The world is rapidly urbanizing. More and more cities around the world are becoming increasingly popular as economic powerhouses and magnets for migrants from the countryside, suburban areas and other parts of the world. All big cities in both First and Third World countries as well as emerging markets such as New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Dehli, Jakarta etc. have to cope with high population density and serious challenges such as air pollution or traffic congestion. 

How do we pack more people into big cities and yet continue to achieve a high quality of life? How do we create and manage ‘good cities’ which are safe, spacious, green, connected, fair and resilient? How can cities create economic wealth while still fulfilling the CSR responsibilities of sustaining a “Green Planet”? What are the best practice designs and technical smart city solutions which could be leveraged to tackle these challenges and how can they be successfully commercialised? This course will provide answers to these questions with special emphasis on the managerial and commercial aspects of smart city concepts. 

The key lies in creating and effectively managing innovative and sustainable, smart cities able to leverage on new technologies such as smart grids or sensor networks to create a place where people can live, play and work well. Starting from the stakeholder requirements of citizens and planners of innovative cities, the course will introduce students to urban design concepts as well as commercialization, management challenges and implementation issues of the smart city model. There will also be a focus on how good governance and enabling technologies such as sensor networks can facilitate the creation, management and sustainability of ‘good’ cities. 

With the help of case studies and resource persons such as industry leaders, innovative city designers, tech experts and business development experts from local and int. companies such as ST Electronics, JTC, Jurong Consultants, Frost & Sullivan, IDA International, Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) etc., students will be familiarized with the opportunities and challenges of the ‘smart city business’ which represents a key element in the value creation and extraction strategy of the Singapore Government and related businesses.

Smartphones, social media and generative artificial intelligence have made easy work of information production, dissemination and consumption. They have also, correspondingly, facilitated the proliferation of misinformation. Widespread false, inaccurate and misleading information can have profound consequences on the well-being of individuals, organisations, and societies; threatening public health and safety, inciting socialunrest, and disrupting livelihoods. 

Its effects have been especially pronounced in recent years, hindering vaccination drives, compelling irrational behaviours, threatening political processes, and causing significant financial losses. What drives some to believe in, and act on misinformation? What can individuals, organisationsand societies do to manage misinformation? Can we believe anything that we see anymore? In exploring concepts, conditions and consequences of misinformation, this course invites students to question the truths, tales and lies that may be guiding human behaviours, social relations, and global affairs.

The overall objective of this module is to build and develop students’ competency in leadership and teamwork skills. The course employs both a theoretical and an experiential learning approach with the aim of fulfilling the objectives as outlined below. Students will gain knowledge and skills about leadership development and team-building skills based on theories, principles, concepts, application, exercises/class activities, self-assessments/instruments, and experiential learning. 

Central to the course is a group project that takes the form of an action-based and experiential assignment, where student groups work with an industry partner with the aim of achieving innovative solutions for the company or organization. Based on this experiential learning, students will gain the practical aspects of the process of teamwork and team leadership. 

The ultimate aims and objectives revolve around learning from the process of the group project lessons on both leadership and teamwork. More is elaborated under Section B of this course outline. The outcomes of the group project for students are outlined as follows:

(i) Students will learn about leadership from the leaders they are connecting with. For example, they will learn how and why today’s leaders are engaged in community-based or social initiatives in Singapore and beyond. 

(ii) Students will also learn from the leaders lessons on leadership and/or teamwork based on the leaders’ experiences.

(iii) By undertaking a hands-on group project, students will also learn practical lessons as well as the complexities of teamwork based on their OWN experience and process of working internally, with their group mates and externally, with organizations outside of school.

(iv) Each student will also reflect on his/her own learning throughout the project from start to end as outlined below (see ‘Reflection Essay’ for details).

(v) Students will also fulfill other learning objectives that include cognitive and academic development as outlined below in the section, ‘Learning Objectives'