Campbell on Branding and Innovation

Classes I'm taking for Fall semester

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm only on my second day as a grad student at the Institute of Design but I'm already loving the classes I've taken. I thought I'd post the courses I have lined up for this Fall semester, which is divided into two quarters and an intersession:

1st Quarter
Cognitive Human Factors
Portfolio Planning
Prototyping Methods
Concept Evaluation
Observing Users
Design Planning Workshop

Intersession
Physical Human Factors

2nd Quarter
Design Planning
Service Design as a model for Business Design
New Product Definition
Observing Users, cont.
Design Planning Workshop, cont.

Depending on the workload, I might add an additional class I'm interested in, Decision Making, in the 2nd quarter. Can you see why I'm so jazzed now? This is killer!

Back to School

Hi, all! Welcome. This is the first post on my new Branding and Innovation blog. You can learn lots more detail about me in my bio but the Cliff's Notes version is that I am currently the manager, prospect marketing at Harley-Davidson, handling lead generation and lead nurturing and online/interactive advertising.

I also just started school yesterday at the Institute of Design (ID) in Chicago, working toward my Master of Design Methods degree. I'm super jazzed!

So here I am on Day 2, sitting at ID between classes creating a new blog on my two favorite topics - branding and innovation. I thought, what better time to kick off a blog on these two topics than while I have one foot in the brand/marketing camp that is Harley and the other foot in the innovation/design camp that is ID?

As I currently envision it, this blog will cover a range of topics including observations and insights on marketing and design-centered thinking, my experiences as a student at ID learning how to better meld the worlds of business thinking and design thinking, the importance of design and human-centered innovation to organizations big and small, for profit or not, the need to be bold and take risks, and other exciting and amusing happenings as they strike me.

Be sure and check back as I describe this super great experience at ID, how I decided to go back to school, why I chose design over a MBA (or nothing), what I've learned about branding and innovation and how my thinking applies to current action in the business world...