Accelerating new and innovative solutions for universities that support regional stewardship
Design Accelerator Program
The Design Accelerator
The Design Accelerator provides an opportunity to support the upward mobility of institutions, the students they serve, and the overall educational fabric of the higher education systems. Regional stewardship led by universities include human capital development; workforce development, partnerships with industry, local government and community engagement to design and support a thriving social ecosystem. The Design Accelerator’s model deploys a design that support and encourages collaboration between participating institutions for a multiplier effect within the region.
What is the design?
The Design Accelerator is an immersive one year program with design sessions, mentoring and prototyping.
The IMPACT Framework anchors the experience
The IMPACT Framework is woven throughout the Design Accelerator experience providing a proven approach to advancing ideas to implementation. Each session in the multi-month program is focused on one element of the framework to support iteration of the prototype toward a well-defined implementation plan.
Designed around a systems-level challenge
The Design Accelerator focuses on a specific challenge identified at the system-level. Design teams from participating institutions identify ideas to address the challenge, then work with design experts and mentors to structure and advance their ideas and iterate towards implementation. The program expertly weaves in the real-world decision making of institutional leaders and the needs of their stakeholders, utilizing critical frameworks across their learning journey.
Advances impactful outcomes for U.S. public universities
By blending synchronous and asynchronous experiences, the Design Accelerator drives ideation and implementation planning for innovative student-focused solutions and regional stewardship. Teams will work within and across institutions to develop prototypes for addressing central challenges within the region
The PI Framework puts people at the center of the solution
The Principled Innovation (PI) Framework supports the ability for leaders to imagine new concepts, catalyze ideas and form new solutions, guided by principles that create positive change. It carefully considers context and larger systems while placing the people who are affected by the problem at the center of the proposed solution
Who is involved?
The Design Accelerator advances values-driven experiences for three core audiences
Chancellors
System leadership gains value through a focused effort to drive change within and across institutions and over time impact the state.
Presidents
Institutional leaders gain support from the system to address change issues while also strengthening capacity for innovation within their institutions.
Executive Design Teams
Leaders within the institution build capacity to impact change for longterm results to advance institutional level change.
What is the experience?
The Design Accelerator builds institutional capacity to innovate through an immersive learning process. An example of the program timeline is outlined below. A typical program timeline runs 12 months total from System Selection to the Pilot Phase.
What is the benefit?
The Design Accelerator’s targeted outcomes focus on sustainability and scale
1
Accelerate progress on high-impact projects through new design approaches with significant results.
3
Cultivate new capabilities through mindsets, skillsets and toolsets.
5
Develop a network across universities within the system to support sharing of best practices, tracking of lessons learned and to avoid a “reinventing the wheel” approach.
2
Create a process that supports continuous focus on outcomes for strategic scale, success and long-term sustainable change.
4
Amplify value of existing strategic opportunities within institutions and across the system.