Engaging Thinking
Engaging your Intellectual Capital Assets ©

Engaged Thinking offers a human centered organizational framework with the objective: to engage intellectual capital assets across the full spectrum of innovation. These assets include human capital, consumer capital, and structural capital. Human capital is the knowledge and skills within an organization that can be leveraged to create value. Consumer capital refers to the linkages made to consumers across the innovation and product value chains. Structural capital encompasses the organizational values, structure, the associated processes and systems to enable human and consumer capital. 

The goals of this course are to: Define Engaged Thinking, understand your intellectual capital assets, discuss the macro and micro perspectives of engaged thinking, assess opportunities to engage and empower your employees and consumers, determine how to build a culture of engagement within your organization, evaluate engagement opportunities across your innovation value chain, and discuss how to design for engagement and behaviour change.  

The course explores the concept of Engaged Thinking through videos, discussions, case studies, readings, through the introduction of relevant frameworks, and key takeaways. By the end of this course, you will have a variety of tools available to begin the Engaged Thinking discussion within your organizations.

Engaging the Whole Patient 
Walk a Mile in the Patient's Shoes

This course presents an in-depth analysis of the whole patient framework. The course is structured around discussions, reflections and assessments, as well as comparative analysis-- enabling students to both individually and collaboratively discuss engagement strategies across the engagement spectrum for the whole patient. 

Patient case studies will be used to provide opportunities for practical application of the whole patient framework. Stakeholders will “Walk a Mile in the Patient’s Shoes” to gain a holistic sense of patient needs and expectations for engagement and health management—ultimately encouraging the design of health innovation and health service delivery for the whole patient. 

Designing for Sustainability
Bridging Engaged Thinking with Designing for the EnvironmentEngaged thinking is a person-centered approach to innovation. It is the organizational framework used to engage consumers and human capital from design to launch of products and services. 

Bridging engaged thinking with designing for the environment, the course provides students with the opportunity to design holistic consumer solutions with a view of sustainability and the circular economy. Through the empowerment and engagement of employees, the course will additionally consider how the experiences and knowledge of an organization can be leveraged to design products and services driven by the sustainability paradigm. 

Sustainable Living
Learning to consume and live responsibly

Sustainable living is a lifestyle that attempts to reduce an individual’s footprint by reducing the use of natural and personal resources. Through an assessment of an individual’s diet, health management, energy and household management practices, methods of transportation, as well as overall consumption patterns, individuals can learn to consume and live responsibly.

This course presents an in-depth analysis of sustainable living and responsible consumption. The course is structured around discussions, personal reflections and assessments, as well as comparative analysis-- enabling students to both individually and collaboratively discuss and design their sustainable lifestyles.

The Human Connections in Entrepreneurship
Creating human connections and value through entrepreneurship

Across the entrepreneur’s journey are opportunities to create human connections to employees, partners, and the community at large.  The course is structured around discussions, reflections and assessments, as we consider opportunities for the entrepreneur to engage internal and external stakeholders.  

The course follows the entrepreneur's journey from start up, through to growth, and expansion, considering both the increasing number of connections made as well as the enlargement of the venture's vision and purpose. As a nuanced view, the course will consider how the creation of social, shared or sustainability driven value, may present themselves as opportunities for the venture.