Launching a startup can be one of the most incredible and most frightening experiences. To help you validate your idea or startup we've partnered with the University of Delaware's Horn Program in Entrepreneurship's Director of Graduate Program, Tony Middlebrooks, Ph.D. Tony will lead a workshop on Design Thinking to help you improve and evaluate your business and its potential.
Design thinking is a proven and repeatable problem solving protocol that any business or profession can employ to achieve big results. Design thinking combines creative and critical thinking that allows information and ideas to be organized, decisions to be made, situations to be improved, and knowledge to be gained. It’s a mindset focused on solutions and not the problem.
Design thinking dispositions generally align with the different phases of creative problem-solving, and have been utilized to enhance innovation. Organizations use design thinking for internal challenges, developing individual employees, more fully engaging customers, building better teams, exploring and identifying opportunities, and expanding the time that employees generate ideas. Most significant, design thinking represents a shift in mindset and consequent ways in which leaders and followers address problems and one another.
About your teacher:
Tony Middlebrooks, Ph.D. creates tools, explores and teaches at the intersection of leadership, innovation, creativity and design as Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in the Horn Program in Entrepreneurship at the University of Delaware. Previously he helped develop the Organizational and Community Leadership program at UD, and the doctoral program in leadership as a professor at Cardinal Stritch University. He spent ten years prior in non-profit leadership positions culminating in writing, consulting, and presenting on a variety of leadership topics. Dr. Middlebrooks teaches courses in leadership theory and practice, decision-making, creativity and innovation, and social entrepreneurship. His current research interests focus on methods of leadership education and the integration of leadership, creativity, and design thinking. Dr. Middlebrooks has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He can be reached at [email protected].
Ticket price includes light refreshments during seminar.