USU students study creative thinking in Switzerland

LOGAN — Mary Shelley thought up the idea for her enduring novel about Frankenstein while on a trip to Switzerland in 1816. So it's fitting that a group of Utah State University business and art students traveled this summer to the land of watches and chocolate to study a new beast created by fusing their right-brain and left-brain abilities.

It's called "design thinking": cultivating creative (right-brain) ways of problem-solving to foster innovation. Why study it? Because, some say, today's humans are in the midst of a shift from an information economy to a conceptual economy in which intuition will replace logic.

In other words, today's top jobs require broader mental skills.

"There's a whole new field emerging," said Bob Winward, a graphic design professor who led the three-week trip. "Especially in a world where anything that can be reduced to an algorithm is being shipped off to India or China; all that's left is innovation."

But the 10 Jon M. Huntsman School of Business students and 29 design students from the Caine College of the Arts got more than a mental workout. After a few days of orientation, they found themselves snowshoeing three miles up a high mountain pass in the Swiss Alps, on their way to the famed Great St. Bernard Hospice.

There, monks put them to work on a service project to construct kennels for the St. Bernard dogs they have traditionally bred to rescue travelers caught in avalanches. Due to the harsh conditions and risk of snow slides, the gigantic kennels made of 60-pound steel beams are dismantled and reconstructed each year.

With snow and fog swirling around the students, "you couldn't see in front you," said business student Bonnie Green.

The monks also instructed the students on the principle of empathy.

"You have to learn how to understand other people if you're going to design things for people," said Rich Wills, a graphic design student hoping to work in movies or video games. He called the project "one of the hardest things I've ever done."

Chris Fawson, an economics professor and associate dean in the business school, who also went on the trip, said it was a unique opportunity to see the world through a different lens. "The best business schools are looking for ways to stretch their students' understanding of the world," he said.

While business education in the past has been highly technical, Fawson said, "Successful businesses at their core are driven by innovation and creativity."

Meanwhile, the design students visited stores and factories to see how ideas travel from the drawing pad to the marketplace. Their emphasis was on making their creations more "human-centered," with the end user in mind.

Wills said the course helped him think about being a designer and entrepreneur at the same time. "The best ideas come when you have all these different thought processes coming together."

e-mail: pkoepp@desnews.com