![\"customer-centric](\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2022\/08\/Kenneth.jpg\")
<\/a>Kenneth Fields ’98, BlueInc Strategies.<\/p><\/div>\n
To help organizational leaders adapt to the new speed of innovation, the Center for Corporate and Professional Development at Furman<\/a> has created \u201cCustomer-Centric Innovation,\u201d<\/a> a three-day program offered April 21-23, in the Thomas Anderson Roe Art Building on Furman\u2019s campus. The program, Herrera says, “will teach participants to use design-thinking methods to more quickly ideate, test and execute ideas with the customer in mind.”<\/p>\n The program is the first of many that will combine experts in design thinking with Furman professors who will teach related topics, such as neuroscience, communication, art and philosophy. They\u2019re aimed at managers and senior leaders from a variety of organizations, from K-12 education to health care to the automotive industry. Herrera alluded to the programs in this July 23, 2019 op-ed<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Customer-Centric Innovation program will be led by Kenneth Fields, Johannes Mutzke and Ross McClain. Fields, a 1998 Furman graduate, and Mutzke met while working at Michelin and started their own consulting business, BlueInc Strategies<\/a>. They have worked with both the Stanford dSchool<\/a> and IDEO<\/a> \u00a0as they developed their design-thinking expertise. McClain, a specialist in strategic design, is chair of the art department at Furman.<\/p>\n \u201cDesign thinking teaches people to think like a kid again,\u201d says Fields. \u201cA kid who\u2019s learning how to ride a bike is going to play around with it, they\u2019re going to fall and they\u2019re going to try again. We want people to think like that with their customers in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n Fields and Mutzke will lead people in identifying new ideas for their organizations and coming up with prototypes, \u201cpipe cleaners and construction paper stuff,\u201d Fields says. They\u2019ll get feedback quickly to move the design closer to what a customer might want.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the training, we very quickly take people where they wouldn\u2019t have intentionally gone and have them talk with someone they might not typically have talked to,\u201d Fields says. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be challenging and uncomfortable at times, but they\u2019re going to grow, then they\u2019re going to teach other people to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n