Design Practices

Businesses cannot succeed by looking at every challenge through the same spreadsheet-based prism. Subjects like finance and supply chain management remain vital, but design practices can help you leverage your knowledge of these core areas within a constantly changing environment. These practices include observing behaviors, visualizing ideas, prototyping alternatives, and refining the best of them. The Weatherhead MBA curriculum integrates these skills and equips our graduates to approach complex, real-world challenges with creativity and flexibility.

On Case Western Reserve University’s campus, located at the heart of University Circle, students find themselves in one of the most dense concentrations of educational, scientific, medical, and cultural institutions in the United States. The Weatherhead School of Management is within a few minutes’ walk of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The presence of these world-class cultural assets and the process of working with architect Frank Gehry on the plan for our iconic home in the Peter B. Lewis building influenced the decision to integrate design practices into Weatherhead's culture and curriculum. Drawn by the potency of these initiatives for the future of design as well as that of management, Richard Buchanan, PhD, one of the world’s leading design theorists and teachers, joined our faculty in 2008. Fine art professors, theatre directors, and art historians visit our classrooms to introduce their disciplines into our business studies. Design is becoming a competency that sets our graduates apart.