Lecture Jeremy Utley and Perry Kleban on design thinking

Jeremy Utley and Perry Kleban teach at d.school, Stanford University’s innovation center, where students from different faculties collaborate to find creative solutions to the world’s problems and develop innovative products. Jeremy Utley founded a small venture capital fund in Bolivia and as a business development consultant works with startups as well as companies from the Fortune 500. Among the companies he works with is d.light, a company founded at d.school that develops solutions for those who don’t have access to permanent electricity. Kleban Perry is the founder at shoe-manufacturer Atlas Snowshoe. He developed international clothing brand Patagonia and has been general director at San Francisco-based bag manufacturer Timbuk2 since 2007. An entrepreneur by nature, Perry Kleban evaluates the success of his courses by the number of products released on the market, while Jeremy Utley fosters the students’ analytical skills and their desire to create human-oriented innovations.

At this lecture, Jeremy and Perry will talk about the essence of design thinking, about the methodology to create innovation, and about the importance of collaborating across disciplines and combining creative and analytical approaches. Students will learn which stages make up the development process, why a problem’s setting and definition are no less important than its solution, why to create prototypes, what the plusses are of working with experts from different disciplines on every step of the project rather than on different parts of it, and what search process leads to unexpected and innovative solutions.

Language: english