Integrative Frameworks: Innovation in Global Problem Solving (Module 1)

PRO 7255 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

What does it mean to design for distributed experimentation rather than central control? How can we recognize and support ingenuity that already exists in communities?  How do individual solutions fit in a complex world where creativity is abundant and where innovators need to notice, nurture and connect what already exists?  

This course explores emergent approaches to addressing global challenges. Over six weeks, students explore frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals, wicked problems, decolonizing innovation, the intersection of artificial and collective intelligence, collaborating without consensus and systems thinking applied to global problems. Taught by the founder of the United Nation’s largest sustainable development innovation network and featuring practitioners from the global majority, the course will give students tools to create social change related to problems in sustainable development. Students can expect to question how change and impact are made, who drives innovation and how to begin to unpack complexity in global problem solving.

While this course may complicate how we understand making change, it is designed to unleash hope for how to make an impact on social and environmental problems. Learning objectives include design and engineering roles in global change, designing interaction for collective intelligence, and understanding the dichotomy between scaling solutions versus working within complex adaptive systems. The curriculum challenges students to think critically about real use cases in social and environmental innovation and to design interventions to create common ground on wicked problems.