This FIVE-day, highly experiential, open enrollment programme will help managers become innovation catalysts in their organizations. It builds upon our 15-year long partnership with ArtCenter College of Design in California, one of the most influential design schools in the world, to offer a unique experiential learning to help managers integrate creative thinking with their business thinking. Business participants in this programme will collaborate in-person with industrial designers to experience how to enable successful creative collaborations. Click here for more details on this programme.

This five-week ON-LINE open enrollment programme allows managers to take on a hands-on learning journey that will help them develop the creative-thinking skills needed to innovate in any organisational context. Participants joining this programme will carry out an Action Learning Project tailored to their organisation’s context. Such a project will allow participants closely collaborate with design coaches thoughout the programme. Click here for more details on this programme.

Creative Garage

A dedicated space for students, alumni and executives in which they can generate and exchange creative ideas that integrate design and business thinking. We partnerted with Eight Inc (a world class leading design firm) to conceptualize, designe, and developed this space to teach our "Creative Thinking" MBA courses as well as our "Innovation By Design" Executive programmes. In addition, any MBA or Exec Ed course that requires a dedicated space to spark creativity in an experiential teaching will be using this space.

We are also using this space to carry out experimental research to study how the physical space influences creative problem solving. Click here to watch a video to learn more about the Creative Garage initiaitve.

The INSEAD-ArtCenter collaboration focuses on integrating design and business thinking for succesful innovation management. This collaboration is supported by the Heinrich and Esther Baumann-Steiner Fund for Creativity and Business and the Creativity-Business Learning Platform.

As part of our MBA program, every year ten design students from the Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA) come to INSEAD for four months to learn about structured managerial methods. Their participation in our program provides us with the opportunity to collaborate with people with strong training and background in industrial design. For MBA participants collaborating with designers provides an opportunity to learn the value of using structured methods for creativity generation and presenting ideas in a holistic way through graphical or physical objects. This is relevant in many areas of the firm in which having distinct problem solving capabilities provides special competitive advantage.

The following selected press articles provide further details about the collaboration between INSEAD and the Art Center College of Design:

• “Giving design the business: The ROI on Art Center’s longstanding partnership with INSEAD”, Dotted Line: Art Center’s official blog. March 2015
• “Creative Boost-By Design”, INSEAD Alumni Magazine, June 2014.
• “Picturing the art of business”, (INSEAD Knowledge, July 28, 2011; includes video)
• “Schools learn from the world of design”, Financial Times, September 13, 2010
• "MBA students have designs on innovation" (Financial Times, October 8, 2007)

A core course in the INSEAD/ArtCenter collaboration is the MBA course series entitled "Creative Thinking". This course series is currently structured in two modules:

This MBA course elective covers three important phases in product and service development: Strategic planning, concept creation, and concept realization. First, the entire class selects the product ideas that will be developed into product concepts. Then, interdisciplinary teams (with at least one designer on it) are assigned to develop one of the selected ideas. Each team carries out market research, concept generation, early prototyping, and concept selection to define a final product concept. Then, each product/service concept is architected and developed in further details. Prototyping and user testing is conducted to resolve uncertainties associated with their product concept. Finally, teams develop a plan for product launch.

Click here to download the course outline

See here an article about our collaboration with Disney during the last two edition of this course.

• “Design, Business & Brand: How Creativity Becomes Innovation”, July 13, 2015.

• “A Matchmaker for Public-Private Partnerships”, April 2018

Creative Thinking (Fieldtrip)

This module is a "Reality check" that takes MBA and Design participants to Southern California, not only to visit the Art Center (and learn how Design is taught) but also to visit design studios of companies from various industries and learn how they manage the design/business interface.

1. M. Sosa. 2021. A Virtual Reality (VR) visit to Tekka Market (Little India, Singapore). A VR immersive experience to learn user-centered innovation. INSEAD VR Immerse Experience (pre-release).
2. Baehr, T. and M. Sosa. 2021. FLYDESK – Empowering the “Modern Working Lifestyle”(A)&(B) INSEAD Case 07/2021-6610 (with Teaching Note).
3. Atasu, A. and M. Sosa. 2021. Re-Designing a VHS Tape for Circularity. INSEAD case 05/2021-6670 (with Teaching Note).
4. Martínez-de-Albéniz, V. and M. Sosa. 2019. :)isfrutar. IESE-INSEAD case (in preparation).
5. Carrick, A., J. Mihm, and M. Sosa. 2018. McKinsey and LUNAR: Acquiring a design firm. INSEAD Case 10/2018-6374
6. Carrick, A., M. Sosa. 2018. Eight Inc. and the Apple retail stores. INSEAD Case 12/2018-6303
7. Vissa, R., M. Pich, and M. Sosa. 2017. Public Sector Service Design: Designing the Employment Pass Service Centre for the Ministry of Manpower, Singapore. INSEAD Case 08/2017-6145
8. Grover, A. M. Sosa. 2018. The journey behind “My INSEAD Story”. INSEAD Case 06/2018-6116
9. Singh, A., M. Sosa. 2018. Joyful Frog Digital Incubator: Accelerating Start-ups. INSEAD Case 06/2018-6136
10. Carrick, A., M. Sosa. 2018. Unilin. INSEAD Case (revised pre-release).
11. Desawar, T., M. Sosa. 2016. Bringing Design to OCBC Bank. INSEAD Case (pre-release)
12. Desawar, T., M. Sosa. 2016. Designing a New Bank for GenY: FRANK by OCBC. INSEAD Case (pre-release)
13. Carrick, A., M. Sosa. 2015. Design at Belkin. INSEAD Case (pre-release)
14. Carrick, A., H. Greve, and M. Sosa. 2014. Handpresso: From an innovative idea to an alliance portfolio. INSEAD Case
15. Carrick, A., H. Greve, and M. Sosa. 2014. Handpresso (C). INSEAD Case
16. Carrick, A. M. Sosa, and B. Strousse. 2011. Handpresso (A&B). INSEAD Case 11/2011-5841. iPad version of this case is available upon request.
17. Carrick, A-M. and M. Sosa. 2011. Bazile Telecom. INSEAD Case 05/2011-5755.
18. Carrick, A-M. and M. Sosa. 2011. Mimijumi. INSEAD Case 03/2011-5778.
19. Loch, C. and M. Sosa. 2008. Managing Development Complexity in the Design of mini-MAX. Class simulation.
20. Bhavnani, R. and M. Sosa. 2006. IDEO: Service Design (A&B). Winner of the 2008 ecch European Case Awards, in the production and operations management category. iPad version of this case is available upon request.
21. Balmes, C. and M. Sosa. 2005. R&D Management at Universal Luxury Group – Perfumes and Cosmetics Division (A&B). INSEAD Case 07/2006-5260.
22. Sosa, M. 2002. Bottle Design at Green Beverage Corporation (GBC). INSEAD Case 06/2002-5046.

During the 2004-2008 period, I taught the MBA core course on Process and Operations Management (POM). POM concerns the business processes used to produce and deliver goods and services to customers, or, more succinctly, POM studies how organisations “actually do things.”

• Design, direction, and teaching of "Design Thinking and Creativity for Business" open-enrollment programmes (both on-line and on campus versions)
• GEMBA: Key Management Challenge on "Creative Thinking"
• Both opened enrollment and company specific programs
• Topics include: Design and creative thinking; innovation management, project management, R&D organizations

• Empirical Methods in Technology and Operations Management (2005-present)
• Technology Management Seminar (2002)
• Technology Management Workshop (2003)

• INSEAD’s MBA Best Teacher of Elective Courses Award in Singapore campus July 2021 (for Creative Thinking course)
• Nominated for INSEAD best professor award for MBA elective course (Singapore 2012, 2013)
• INSEAD Dean's Commendation for excellence in MBA teaching (2009, 2011-16, 2019-21)
• Winner of the 2008 ecch European Case Awards in the Production and Operations Management category with the case "IDEO: Service Design (A)". This has been the eccb Best Selling Case in Production and Operations Management for the period 2007-2015