"System Design and Management" faculty. I have another presentation and
the submission of master dissertation at the end of month, which I currently spend
most of my time to. My boss who is anti-schooling stance to me continuously gives me
a kind of cold look that I am not fully engaging into work. I am trying each and every day
for two years without rest, and have been in exhaust in various ways; that proves, my boss
may be right and my mal-being.
Not once had I asked what the graduate program is about, I found it hard to describe.
Not once had I asked what the graduate program is about, I found it hard to describe.
It is based on engineering obviously, it deals with "system" defined in broader terms as
it sounds, and it teaches management disciplines. So where the differences to MBA or MOT, or
maybe other engineering schools reside?
I believe the program is unique in a way it blends the great engineering lessons passed on from a
generation to generation in the Japanese industrial world, with more entrepreneurial studies such as "design thinking" and management/organizational studies of which they may belong to other academical domains. What I understood from them, is that all of these attempts is about "problem solving". The idea is not restricted to business but for us, humans. Therefore it is different from MBA. The faculty actually is more engineer-oriented and love to create something instead of just discussing about big ideas. However, it is also true that the faculty is more focused on impacting the real world, which in turn contradicts my previous statement. Yet it is true that people here are very business and/or impact/result oriented, and it actually is one of the key questions at every class. "How does your idea impact to the real world, and why?"
The last but not the least, the elements that I particularly liked about the curriculum was
"design thinking" course. It is a compulsory course that everyone needs to get together into a team and propose a solution to a client chosen out of diverse mix from private and public sector.
The course takes almost 8-10 months with your team mates whose age range between early 20s up to 50s. I have written about design thinking before, yet I really liked some of its practices that endorses brainstorming and prototyping. In a way, it is an overall exercise of project management, business/product development, and to some extent, entrepreneurship.
I am not telling here that I covered all elements of SDM in above descriptions, yet I hope it captures the essences of our unique faculty and that many other can know the greatness of it.