Abstract:

Beilin district, serving as an important district for education and technology in Xi'an, China, accommodates 17 universities, with the total enrollment of 173.5 thousand students as well as 30 thousand teaching and researchers. Like other areas in the world, enterprises, universities and governments in Beilin face a similar challenge in finding a practice which is potentially valuable for teaching corporations improving innovation products, ideas, organizational outcomes related to innovation, within the particular education and industry resources, bring up more innovation outcomes to support the development of the economy. In view of this, redefining new multidisciplinary learning to stay abreast of change is in urgent need. However, “design thinking” has generated significant attention in the innovation press and has been heralded as a novel problem-solving methodology well suited to the often-cited challenges different organizations face in encouraging innovation and growth.

This paper deals with a project proposing to gradually change the quality and quantity of innovation outcomes in Beilin. Through the combination of online live design thinking courses provided by educational institution abroad together with maker practice representatives from public agencies and private organizations, an open-loop design thinking curriculum was designed for what has been named as “Design Talents” Program. 12 teachers including 2 instructors from American Alliance for International Education teaching design thinking process, 2 teaching assistants (associate professor in the field of design) from China and 8 makers with technical skills got involved in the maker practice process assuring that students acquire a range of capacities during their training. With ages ranging from 19 to 41, a selected group of totally 68 students and makers from different majors in 14 universities at Beilin District, Xi'an, participated in the first phase training.

The results presented, totally 14 innovation projects was born from the training, 3 of which have been set out to break into the market, and 2 of which gained second prize of start-up competition. According to the investigation and deep interview after the training, not only those efficiency and productivity are realized, but also creative confidence, empathy, communication and collaboration, as well as creative behaviors have been fostered. the open-loop design thinking courses constructed an effective route for fostering innovation ability and bringing out more innovation outcomes.

Keywords:

Innovation outcomes, Design thinking, Multidisciplinary course.