design and innovation in business.

For the second year running, I had the pleasure of co-developing a two-week summer school with Kathryn Pashley, designed specifically for non-design students—business, marketing, and law students stepping into the world of sketching, model making, and creative exploration. And they were brilliant. The idea behind the programme is simple: design isn’t just for designers. When applied in a business context, design and innovation skills become powerful tools for solving real-world problems. So we built a summer school course that welcomed students from all sorts of academic backgrounds, offering a hands-on, accessible way into the design mindset. Week one was all about fundamentals—getting messy with sketch ideation, building physical models, framing opportunities in ways that spark fresh thinking. This year, we took things up a notch by weaving generative AI into the mix. Students got to experiment with AI tools to accelerate and expand their creative process—an eye-opener for many who hadn’t seen how digital tools could unlock new directions in design. By week two, it was time to apply it all. Students teamed up to tackle design challenges based on global trends, blending their newly learned skills with insights from their own disciplines.

We deliberately designed the programme to build confidence step-by-step. The atmosphere was safe, open, and focused on learning through doing. And while not everyone will go on to be a designer, they left with something just as valuable: an appreciation for creative collaboration, and the ability to speak the language of design in future professional contexts At its core, this summer school is about giving students the tools and mindset to approach problems creatively—no matter their background.