MBUS673-26S2 (C) Semester Two 2026

Innovation

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 13 July 2026
End Date: Sunday, 8 November 2026
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 26 July 2026
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 27 September 2026

Description

This course is designed to expose students to innovation challenges faced by organisations through experiential learning. This will reinforce and develop knowledge from other postgraduate courses by providing students with the opportunity to apply concepts to innovation-centric problems.

Design Thinking is a people centric, collaborative, optimistic and experimental way of working to drive innovation. It is a pragmatic approach that aims to nurture deep curiosity about an issue, unleash creativity in how to approach it, and ensure clarity when it comes to implementing solutions.  
In these sessions we introduce a process that can be used to approach problems with this new perspective. We work with a lot of new tools and techniques that will help teams collaborate in more creative ways. And we use these to address live business/organisational/societal issues to show how this method can be practically applied.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Describe and apply the principles that underpin a design approach to innovation: human centric,
diverse collaboration, growth mindset and active experimentation.
• Create desirable, feasible and viable solutions to complex problems by:
o Nurturing deep curiosity about a problem by using discovering and understanding tools
o Unleashing creativity through the creating and testing phase with appropriate techniques
o Having clarity when it comes to resourcing and implementing innovative solutions
• Critically reflect and report on the design thinking process as a means of creating value.

Prerequisites

(1) 60 points from MBAZ, MBUS, MPAC, MBIS, MFIN; or (2) 30 points from PROD at 600-level (01 Jan 2021 - present); or (3) with approval from the Head of Department.

Restrictions

MBAZ673

Equivalent Courses

MBAZ673

Timetable 2026

Students must attend one activity from each section.

Lecture A
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Wednesday 12:00 - 15:00 Rehua 620
13 Jul - 23 Aug
7 Sep - 18 Oct

Timetable Note

Semester 2, Wednesdays 12:00pm - 3:00pm – Rehua 620

Course Coordinator

Christian Walsh

Lecturer

Vaughan Broderick

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage 
Individual Report 25%
Team Project Report 30%
Individual Reflections 35%
Team Project Presentation 10%

Textbooks / Resources

Required Readings:
HBR Guide to Unlocking Creativity. 10634-PDF-ENG

Supplied (via Learn):
Kolko J. 2015. Design Thinking Comes of Age, Harvard Business Review, Sept  
Liedtka J. 2015. Linking Design Thinking with Innovation Outcomes through Cognitive Bias Reduction, Journal of Product Innovation Management;32(6):925–938
Brown T. 2008. Design Thinking, Harvard Business Review, June  
Liedtka J. 2018. Why Design Thinking Works, Harvard Business Review, Sept  
Brown T, Wyatt J. 2010. Design Thinking for Social Innovation. Stanford Social Review.  

Recommended books:
Chip & Dan Heath, (2010), Switch, How to change when change is hard. London: Random House
Bowmast, N (2018), USERPALOOZA – A Field Researcher’s Guide, https://userpalooza.co.nz/
Kelly T, Kelly D. Creative Confidence. William Collins 2014.
Walsh, C. & Broderick, V. (2026), Innovation in Action: Unlock Curiosity, Creativity and Clarity with the DUCTRI toolkit. Wiley. www.innovationinactionbook.com

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $1,198.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Management, Marketing and Tourism .

All MBUS673 Occurrences

  • MBUS673-26S2 (C) Semester Two 2026