Academic Design Thinking Pedagogy as an Approach to Foster Sustainability Skills in Higher Education

In today's world, humanity grapples with numerous sustainability challenges, each with far-reaching and global implications. Climate change stands as a salient example of such challenges. Recognizing the urgency, the United Nations (UN, 2023) published a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 to foster global human well-being. These SDGs encompass a wide range of interconnected issues that are crucial for achieving sustainable development worldwide. By outlining these goals, the United Nations provides a framework, urging governments, organizations, and individuals to collaboratively stride towards a just, prosperous, and sustainable future.

Given the scale and complexity of sustainability challenges, a collective effort encompassing individuals, communities, corporations, and governments is crucial. Higher business education stands at the forefront of this initiative. Leading business schools globally are fostering the development of leaders poised to effect transformative changes across societal sectors (AACSB, 2023). Subsequently, the integration of sustainability into business education curricula has intensified, echoing its escalating importance. As educators, we are tasked with weaving sustainability into our pedagogical practices to ensure graduates are primed to address these challenges and emerge as future change agents.

The subsequent query for educators then becomes: what are the precise 21st-century competencies that these graduates must possess to navigate the uncertainties of the future? The Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR) provides a detailed blueprint, outlining a multi-dimensional framework (CCR 2015; 2019). This emphasizes the synergies between knowledge, which spans traditional disciplines and modern interdisciplinary fields; skills, particularly the 4C's: creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration; character, emphasizing ethical behaviors and qualities such as mindfulness and resilience; and meta-learning, centered on self-awareness and adaptability. Cumulatively, this framework equips graduates with a diverse skill set, positioning them to confront the intricate sustainability challenges of today.

With this context in mind, the purpose of chapter is to delve into the transformative potential of design thinking as a means of addressing these sustainability issues. Rooted in a human-centric philosophy, design thinking accentuates the significance of individual experiences and emotions throughout the problem-solving process (Brown, 2008). By championing this approach, we cultivate a profound understanding of human needs, thereby ushering in solutions that are both ground-breaking and contextually relevant. Moreover, immersion in design thinking endows learners with pivotal abilities that supersede conventional problem-solving paradigms, fostering a confluence of creativity, collaboration, and proactive innovation, which are essential for confronting complex sustainability challenges (CMI, 2021; Enell-Nilsson et al., 2023; OECD, 2019).

Design thinking has been recognized as a pedagogical approach, empowering students to become proactive agents of change. They are not only equipped with knowledge but also poised to instigate transformative actions across their organizations, communities, and even larger societal structures (Razzouk & Shute, 2012; von Thienen et al., 2017). Existing literature comprehensively identifies the myriad benefits of embedding design thinking in education, such as the cultivation of empathy, the promotion of critical thinking, immersion in flow experiences, and fostering a profound sense of achievement and purpose (Jaskari, 2013b; von Thienen et al., 2017). However, like any approach, its implementation is not without challenges. Notably, while design thinking is widely celebrated for its unparalleled ability in fostering ideation and creativity, its occasionally abstract orientation does attract criticism. It's essential to understand that the mere generation of ideas, in isolation, is not adequate. For genuine impact, these ideas demand rigorous feasibility evaluation, and they must be anchored in robust, pragmatic business rationales before any business initiatives can genuinely materialize and succeed (Panke & Harth, 2018).