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NewNorth Center founder Nate Young leads a discussion during a course on design thinking and innovation in Holland PHOTO: JOE BOOMGAARD

By Joe Boomgaard | MiBiz
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HOLLAND — After about a year in existence, the NewNorth Center for Design in Business just had its first cohort of participants complete the inaugural trimester of courses.

The mix of people in various levels of influence from companies of all sizes and industry types contributed to a robust discussion of how design thinking plays a role in business, Stephanie Elhart, director of client relations and communications at NewNorth, told MiBiz.

NewNorth is a nonprofit hybrid education center serving business leaders by educating them about design thinking and what designers can do to drive innovation in their corporations. MiBiz first broke the story about NewNorth’s creation in September 2009. Headed by Nate Young, formerly a VP at Johnson Controls, founder of TWISThink and past provost of Art College Center for Design, NewNorth focuses on helping non-designers and designers alike to better grasp the process of innovation.

The program offers an Innovation Methods Certification, a yearlong program; business studio appointments, intended to help executives learn and master design thinking; custom training, perhaps to help an individual company team; and Innovation Now, an embedded, project-based approach offering a compressed innovation timeframe.

“We’re not a consulting firm. We’re here to teach different tools, the tools to help them leverage and discover their capabilities,” Elhart said. “We’re infusing (design thinking) within companies.”

The IMC program, to date, has gone “better than expected” in its first run, she said, noting the diversity of the participants has led to “constant mixing and learning.” The program has delved into the basics of innovation and the innovation process. The next two trimesters will focus on learning tools with case studies and the creation of a project for each participant to work on within his or her company, she said.

The faculty, including designers from across the country, draw on their own experience and the guidelines set forth by Young to help participants learn various design methods and how to customize them to individual companies and situations.

The IMC program meets all day one day per week in Holland, with a break for a lunch speaker, dubbed a “guest Yoda,” to share hands-on experience in innovation through design thinking applied to the day’s lesson.

Elhart said word of NewNorth’s work has begun to spread. As participants in the IMC program or other custom offerings begin to talk, other organizations have started to engage in initial conversations with the center. For one, Elhart said the executive team has been impressed with the diversity of interested parties, whose companies vary from manufacturing to healthcare to service and beyond.

“I think we’ve benefited from people looking for something positive,” she said. “I do believe we’re coming out (of the economic downturn) slowly. And I believe NewNorth represents something positive. We teach you to do more with the people you have. Companies have smart people, but they need to figure out how to get more smart things out of them. They’ve survived, and now they need to (expand) out of that. It’s not like creating a work of art — it’s a thought process.”

While NewNorth certainly has drawn interest from a Michigan-based audience, it’s also attracted national attention. The center was the subject of a recent profile in Fast Company. Moreover, the faculty has been tapped for custom training programs abroad, traveling as far away as Asia to share knowledge.

“We’re all for the economic development of West Michigan, but to talk about our capabilities and prove what we can do, it helps to have case studies from across the U.S. and the world. It’s a validator of sorts,” Elhart said. “We have to make revenue, but we still want to bring home that what we’re doing is from West Michigan. We have a strong community here. We want to be a model, for people to see what can be done here in West Michigan and think about whether you could do that in your own region…to create business opportunities and product opportunities.”

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TAGS:

• design
• economic development
• holland
• nate young
• newnorth center for design in business
• stephanie elhart
• twistthink