Outside of your comfort zone and non-linear thinking

A 180º Academy course is a praxis-oriented education in people-centered concept making. We educate concept makers who understand the whole process of innovation and can see the world from the people‟s point-of-view – and not only from the company's.

180º Academy will create and empower the next generation of leaders around the world through non-traditional learning methods provided by internationally recognized researchers, practitioners and instructors.

180º Academy students will learn to speak a common, cross-disciplinary language between the analytics, the business people, the engineers and the designers within their company, and thereby getting a 360º perspective on the innovation process. There will be a golden thread throughout the program where effective business modeling will be introduced as it relates to the different phases of the collect, create and commercialize process (the development and implementation of concepts).

Our learning process is hands-on, based on the integration of business anthropology, people-centered design and the global business perspective. We believe in real people, real challenges and real concepts, and that innovation cannot happen unless we move outside of our comfort zones and search for new ideas.

Therefore 180º Academy students will be immersed in the real world through projects in both developing and developed countries (for example: South Africa) in order to shed their blinkers and remove the barriers to innovation that have been created through staying within our comfort zone.

Innovation begins with knowing your customer or potential customer, which requires an emphasis on the front end of concept development. Accepting this fact, 180º Academy turns the academic approach to innovation and concept-making around. Non-linear thinking is crucial to us, because we want to give our students the ability to adapt to any given context at any given time. It also reflects the reality and work in today. We also believe there is no one right model to innovation. At 180º Academy students will be taught how to be flexible and how to determine the right methods for any given challenge.

Achieving this transformation, 180º Academy will blend the three phases of innovation giving the students the relevant tools to collect, create and commercialize knowledge and ideas necessary to form concepts. This is done both through inter-disciplinary learning and by bringing together people from different areas of the company. We combine students with different educational backgrounds, competences and thinking styles.