AY2026/27 Term 1

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. 

This program begins with a one-week intensive boot camp (Sessions 1–4) structured as a combination of blended learning and evening sessions during the first week of classes that provide a structured foundation in AI for financial services, including Foundations of AI and Financial Data Literacy, Prompt Engineering and Explainability, AI Prototype Development, and Financial Services AI Requirements. The boot camp is followed by four weeks of blended learning and weekly evening sessions (sessions 5-8) that cover AI Ethics and Risk Management, Data Governance for AI, AI Security and Auditability, and one project-related module. After the class sessions are completed, students will spend six weeks working with a financial institution on an industry-focused project. The project will use AI prompting to build an AI agentic prototype to support one of the following areas: AI in Risk Management, AI in Sales and Marketing, AI in Technology and Operations, AI to Support Regulatory Compliance, and AI in Investment Research.

The Application of AI in Financial Services is an SMU-X experiential course delivered in partnership with Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), providing students with immersive learning opportunities that bridge academic theory with industry practice. Students collaborate directly with UBS professionals to tackle authentic business challenges in financial services, developing innovative AI-driven solutions across domains such as trading, risk management, and banking operations. Generative AI will be the enabling technology for the course. Working in multidisciplinary teams under faculty mentorship, students engage in a comprehensive project lifecycle—from initial problem scoping and stakeholder analysis through solution design, development, and final client presentation. This industry-embedded approach ensures students gain practical experience with cutting-edge AI technologies, i.e. large language models (LLMs), while understanding their real-world application constraints and business impact within the financial services sector.

This is an SMU-X course designed in collaboration with Citibank, and has since been extended to include other banking/fintech sponsors such as OCBC, UBS, and NETS. Sponsors will each supply 3-5 projects ideas to select from. Students will form teams of 5 or 6, and select one of the sponsors’ project ideas to work on. Project selections do not need to be unique, meaning multiple teams can select the same project idea.

Each student project team will be assigned to a sponsor and an SMU faculty supervisor. Sponsors will provide project scope and management for student teams to have practical industry learning experiences. Student teams will have weekly check in meetings, either virtually or physically, with their sponsor.

Student project teams will be expected to develop a working software application prototype, to be delivered to the sponsor at the end of the course. Sponsors will specify the technologies to be used, including; development tools/languages, OS, database, 3rd party libraries, target deployment environment e.g. cloud environment.

• Develop an IT system or proof of concept application that satisfies a list of functional and quality requirements. Student will work with a team and practice their requirements gatherings, analysis, design, implementation, testing, deployment and project management skills. 
• Build the additional depth required to become a Business IT professional. This includes building up competence in the student's selected track, applying their learning domain knowledge and technology to the relevant track domain industry sector. 

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 efficient management of our shared resources and the way we dispose of waste and pollutants are crucial to achieving responsible consumption and production. Encouraging industries, businesses and consumers to recycle and reduce waste is necessary, as is supporting consumers to move towards a more sustainable pattern of consumption. This forms the basis of SDG12: Responsible consumption and production, which includes the following targets:1. Substantially reducing waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse2. Reduce food waste along the supply chains, retail and consumer levels3. Ensure that people have the relevant information and awareness for sustainable development. Digital Technologies for Environmental Sustainability (in the Singapore context) is a hands on module which allows students to employ problem solving and prototyping skills using digital technologies to address the above targets. In addition to case studies of how the issue of Responsible consumption and production is tackled by various Singapore organizations, communities and businesses, they will also be exposed to design thinking, hardware and software prototyping, prototyping tools and technologies (IoT, Microcontrollers, App development, Artificial Intelligence, AR/VR, Metaverse) and will gain first hand experience in using these tools to prototype a solution to address a challenge statement around environmental sustainability.

The Enterprise Business Solutions Course is a SMU-X course that will be delivered in collaboration with SAP APJ Innovation Office. This SMU-X course offers an experiential learning opportunity that allows students to translate classroom knowledge and theory into practical solutions for a real organization. Through this student consultancy project, students learn how to work with industry professionals and help come up with innovative solutions for real world problems. The student teams will work under the guidance from the faculty and project sponsor mentors, from problem definition to final client presentation. The course will focus on helping students gain a good understanding of the concepts related to building innovative solutions by leveraging SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). Students will also gain hands-on experience in building solutions using BTP along with other related technologies.

The importance of healthcare was never felt so keenly as during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, there is a greater appreciation of the need to proactively build resilient and high quality health systems, and to explore new innovations. With a rapidly ageing population, the burden of disease will increase even as the pool of potential care providers decreases. At the same time, the cost of healthcare needs to be contained, while meeting patient needs and keeping providers motivated. This calls for radical increases in the productivity of the healthcare sector. In this scenario, there is a need to understand complex systems concepts in assessing the impact of interventions. This technology-agnostic course will explore the context of the healthcare industry, with a particular focus on Singapore and Asia. Students will gain hands-on experience understanding a real-world problem and designing a solution for it, but also in understanding how to assess the broader social context in which solutions are deployed. The course will aim to provide a window to real-world experiences and open-ended problems. It will utilise cases and management games. It will help students to develop critical and holistic thinking, while gaining practical skills in solution development.