How might Art Center College of Design grow their business out of the threat of opportunity? There is infinite business opportunity in the creative process, more so than design deliverables. Art Center could expand its market space by empowering everyone to use design thinking for innovation.

1. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNI-CHUN JEAN CHUANG
ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN
A STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATION ON INFLUENCING CHANGE

2. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNABOUT ART CENTER
2
Art Center College of Design (ACCD,
or ‘Art Center’) is a private art college
located in Pasadena, California. It has
continuously been cited as one of the
best design schools in the world, as
well has being able to boast for
having the top Industrial Design
program in the nation. Art Center has
traditionally built itself as a vocational
school, maintaining a strong “real-
world” focus; its programs
emphasize craftsmanship, technique,
professionalism, and rely slightly less
on theory. During the past decade,
Art Center has developed programs
and projects that focus on design’s
potential for positive social change,
under the initiative Design Matters.
Year founded
1930
Affiliation
Private, nonprofit institution
Applications accepted
Spring, Summer and Fall for most majors
Terms (semesters)
Three 15-week terms per year
Fall 2011 Undergraduate enrollment
1,650 (53% men, 47% women)
Fall 2011 Graduate enrollment
192 (63% men, 37% women)
Costs
Yearly Tuition: $33,544 (2 semesters,
2011-2012)
Annual Operating Budget: $70.3 million (FY
2012)
$50.4 million endowment (as of 6/30/11, FY
2011)
Alumni (FY 2011)
Job Placement Rates for One-Year-Out
Graduates: 91% employed (53% response rate)
Job Placement Rates for Five-Year-Out
Graduates: 90% employed (45% response rate)
2011 Undergraduate enrollment by program
Advertising: 77
Entertainment Design: 98
Environmental Design: 83
Film: 85
Fine Art: 83
Graphic Design: 259
Illustration: 474
Photography and Imaging: 154
Product Design: 136
Transportation Design: 192
Students who complete degrees within six years
70%
Average job-placement rate one year after
graduation
91%*
*Based on alumni-survey responses of 53%.
2011 Graduate enrollment by program
Art: 34
Broadcast Cinema: 64
Industrial Design: 46
Media Design: 44

3. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNCURRENT BELIEFS & LOGIC
3
OS1 THINKING
Business HARMFUL BELIEF
• Art Center believes they are in the business of teaching design skills and exporting graduates to businesses and organizations.
Offer:
Product or service
HARMFUL BELIEF
• ACCD’s industry network and content is unique and advantageous to ACCD
• Businesses need employees who fill roles written in job descriptions
LOGIC
• Create a curriculum, hire industry teachers, cover all the hard skills in job descriptions, produce students who fit job descriptions for entry to mid-level
positions
• “Companies find solutions, great interns, and future employees at ACCD”
“Rigorous, transdisciplinary curriculum”
“Strong ties to industry, commitment to socially responsible design”
“Faculty of professionals” – for their knowledge and professional connections
“Specialised courses” – declaring majors before admissions and having 30 credits to explore and perfect skills
Aim:
High Market Share
in Silo Industry
(product or service
category)
HARMFUL BELIEF
• ACCD’s beautiful and rigorous design legacy, manifested in students’ concepts and skills, will be the factor that continue to attract and retain future
applicants
LOGIC
• Separate disciplines of design, separate degree levels, students graduate into separate roles
• Academic credits are considered separate, and the knowledge learned here are often disconnected from design learning; students often end up thinking
that they are bolt-ons to their education and not required
• Must finish degree with ACCD and design courses from their instructors; students can take academic credits elsewhere but ACCD decides whether to
transfer those credits
Horizon:
Short-term profit
HARMFUL BELIEF
• Both businesses and graduates can get the first end product and upskill themselves as technologies and economies change
• Businesses should train employees to become strategic and graduates only need to be trained in aesthetic/functional design for project based products
and services
LOGIC
• Many students are accepted first year, with a 77% retention rate into later terms. Overall graduation rate is 54%. This means many students get
accepted into Art Center having wasted $17,000 per term of tuition, not knowing that this is not where their talent and interests lies. It is unethical to
accept students only based on portfolio, optional interviews, and essays.

4. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNCURRENT BELIEFS & LOGIC
4
OS1 THINKING
Measurement:
Product profitability
Many students are accepted first year, with a 77% retention rate into later terms. Overall graduation rate is 54%. This means many students get accepted
into Art Center having wasted $17,000 per term of tuition, not knowing that this is not where their talent and interests lies. It is unethical to accept students
only based on portfolio, optional interviews, and essays.
Power & Authority HARMFUL BELIEF
• The instructors at ACCD are the authority of design knowledge and sources of industry network
LOGIC
• Students have access to the Chairs of each department but do not have say in the making of the curriculum, rise of tuition ($1000 each year),
registration process, choice of instructors, and curation of gallery of winning student work
• Must finish degree with ACCD and design courses from their instructors; students can take academic credits elsewhere but ACCD decides whether to
transfer those credits
Mindset:
Competition
HARMFUL BELIEF
Their competitors are other higher-education institutions who teach design
Customer:
Next-in-chain
• Students
• Businesses/organizations who need designers
• Businesses who need a project completed
Objective:
Customer Lock-in
HARMFUL BELIEF
Students need to pay ACCD the most expensive tuition to get the best quality of education i.e. price paid is proportional to quality
LOGIC
The instructors at ACCD are the authority of design knowledge and sources of indsutry network
Must finish degree with ACCD and design courses from their instructors; students can take academic credits elsewhere but ACCD decides whether to
transfer those credits
Need:
Ownership
HARMFUL BELIEF
Students need credits and degrees from them to be considered professional / good / competitive designers.
Values:
Stored in the
end product/service
HARMFUL BELIEF
The value they deliver to students are embedded in the content, hard skills, projects for portfolios, network opportunities from instructors, industry
connections
The value they deliver to employers are industry-ready graduates with hard skills matching expectations of job descriptions

5. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNCURRENT BELIEFS & LOGIC
5
OS1 THINKING
Mentality:
Industrialisation
• “Companies find solutions, great interns, and future employees at ACCD”
• “Specialised courses” – declaring majors before admissions and having 30 credits to explore and perfect skills
Innovation
& Change
• They talk about change at conferences but their own strategies take a lot longer to roll out and take account into change in digital landscape
• They make incremental changes to curriculum
Marketing:
Meet expecations
(sell into existing
market)
HARMFUL BELIEF
• Businesses need employees who fill roles written in job descriptions
• Students expect to learn design skills and aesthetics when they enter
LOGIC
Often accept students after asking them to take the Night-time, Saturday High part-time courses as a way of luring applicants into paying for trial course
Technology
(Make, buy, rely on
technology for advantage)
HARMFUL BELIEF
• Access to facilities and technological resources that include various labs and tools for modelling, printing and prototyping will attract students and instill
value in their skills
LOGIC
• They took a long time to incorporate interaction and digital into their curriculum, when web 2.0 happened they were at least 2 years behind in building a
degree for these
• Their digital marketing are bolt-ons: they have profiles on social networks but not integrated campaigns or solutions
• They use digital spaces to store information that are the same as their physical viewbook
• Registration, alumni networks, marketing communication exist on separate and disconnected websites not optimised for today’s devices
Communication:
Broadcasting
Use emails, printed collaterals to distribute fixed message broadcasted by ACCD
Art Center’s case is one for a threat of opportunity. It does continue to
increase its revenue, without aggressive investment in customer
innovations – student or business. Competition are coming from
peripheral institutions, internet start-ups and initiatives, and even from
customers themselves. It’s time Art Center repositioned its strategic
thinking and occupy new market space to create a value-added
ecosystem for all of its possible new customers.
While Art Center has steady admission rates and continues to develop
programs and initiatives with external companies and NGO, its business
may not be sustainable as it sees value stored in a product that only
gets ‘upgraded’ incrementally. Customers in possible market spaces are
migrating to other newer forms of learning/utilising design, especially in
an economy where paying for the most expensive tuition in the nation
seems like it is a luxury. Users are getting a disconnected experience,
where value provided by Art Center stops 2-3 years after graduation as
technology changes and approach to design needs to keep up with new
behaviors and oragnisational needs.

6. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNTHREAT OF OPPORTUNITY
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WHO MIGHT TAKE ART CENTER OUT OF BUSINESS?
Paid and free
online tutorials
TED/COURSERA
YouTube
Advertising
agencies who
open up their own
schools / learning
workshops in
China & other
emerging
economies
Creator’s Project
Knowledge /
Skillshare
movements
Dr. Dre’s USC
Jimmy Iovine and
Andre Young
Academy
Arts, Technology
and the Business
of Innovation
There are a plethora of factors that show that learning
hard design skills do not require a degree. Knowledge
sharing platforms offer free insights and lessons on basic
principles of design. Many social and content sharing
networks are becoming resources for businesses to look
for talent. Moreover, venture capitalist companies are
investing in incubator programs that foster design &
engineering talent. New institutions are being established
as being multi- or trans-disciplinary in their entirety as
digital is making knowledge and organizational
boundaries blur.
MIT/Aalto
BlogsMobile drawing
applications
Behance
Companies with own innovation lab

7. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNCUSTOMER NEEDS NOT MET
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STUDENT EXPECTATIONS FOR DESIGN EDUCATION
To put things into perspective, I wanted to know whether student expecations before they entered ACCD were exceeded or met after they graduated.
These quotes were then to industry and academic perceptions of design to see if ACCD’s mission has been met.
The following questions were put up on QBN.com to collect user perception of design education.
What motivated you to go to design
school or become a designer?
What did you expect out of your design
education before you began?
“A thorough understanding of fundamental principles, combined with a working
design faculty and real-world projects.”
“To understand processes and techniques applicable in real world.”
“I had natural talent and mild-passion for sketching and drawing. I saw it as a
means to retain, utilize and monetize my talent”
If you can change any aspect of your
education, what could your institution
provide that would help you today?
“Better understanding of the business of creativity. Outside of the portfolio, I
think colleges should help students understand the value of design in business
and how to best monetize their opportunities.
Also adjusting their tuition relative to the income levels of graduates. I think a
lot of private art + design colleges saddle their graduates with unprecedented
amounts of debt that cripple graduates for many years to come. I mean if you're
graduating with $50-60K in debt and your starting salary is $35-50K USD
that's almost a 1/4 of your paycheck. While some may argue the onus is on the
student to plan for their future I would argue that colleges are almost as bad as
banking institutions when it comes to predatory recruiting and lending.”
“Design is the ability to solve problems (let's say human problems... but it could
be anything). Utilizing empathy, listening, and other words you can read on Don
Norman books.
I'm not sure if design is significant in how it's viewed now, but the type of
critical thinking represented a different type of education, which is a lot more
interesting to be. Being inductive, deductive, abductive, and all other "ives" to
help solve problems that arise around the world. The type of thinking and what
it represents if a lot more interesting to me than "what design means right
now"... in that case this week it means people bitching about iOS7.”
If you can change any aspect of your
education, what could your institution
provide that would help you today?

8. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNCUSTOMER NEEDS NOT MET
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INDUSTRY AND ACADEMIC EXPECTATIONS FOR DESIGN EDUCATION
“Design is central to every experience, product or service created and
consumed. Successful companies such as Apple, P&G and BMW are often
cited as corporate leaders that clearly understand the businessvalue of good
design.”
“IDEO’s Diego Rodriguez makes the case that good business arises from a
design-centric process that incorporates marketing, research, and ideas while
RKS Design’s Ravi Sawhney and Deepa Prahalad outline four specific areas in
which design can create value: understanding the consumer, mitigating risk,
boosting marketing and branding, and driving sustainable business practices.”
“Companies that invest in their design capability and develop a reputation for
innovation can avoid competing on price alone: rapidly growing businesses are
twice as likely as others to compete on the basis of innovation.”
“In today’s economy, scholars and practitioners position design as a
company’s most critical competitive advantage. Their collective research
provides evidence that the design process, design thinking and designed
products matter, and make a major contribution to economic and national
competitiveness.”
INDUSTRY EXPECTATION OF DESIGN ACADEMIC EXPECTATION OF DESIGN
There is a big discrepancy of perception between how designers and industry/
academia see the role of design. Art Center needs to shape the expectations so
that it is a valuable business to its customers.

9. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNVALUE GAPS
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TURNING WASTAGE INTO OPPORTUNITIES
Things customers
don’t want
• Lose graduate level employees because they do not know what it is like to look for a culture where they can fit in
Things done badly • Customers end up using a lot of time to upskill designers to become strategic thinkers, and only if they have the aptitude
• Potential underpriviledged customers cannot hire/learn design thinking because it is expensive to hire consultants or to go to a fixed
place to learn
Things done
expensively
• Customers pay the most expensive tuition ($17,000/term) in the US for very little ROI ($35,000 starting salary)
• To have to take out 2–4 years of time away from work for full-time study
• To be told to take expensive Art Center at Night classes to get in
• To have to drive and potentially get into accidents in Los Angeles, and pay for very expensive auto insurance
Fear, uncertainty
& doubt
• To have invested time, money and energy in education and end up not knowing what businesses want in a designer, or lose the goal
of why you went into design in the first place
Things done
disconnectedly
• To move to a different city after graduation, only to find out that Art Center has no industry connection or reputation there
• To graduate and to have little connections with the industry; instructor connections may not always be best matches
Art Center cannot continue to teach design as a means to producing aesthetic projects that are served for the purposes
of holding a job in the creative industry. It needs to shift its strategic position to one of a way of thinking... customers,
students or business, want strategic thinking that helps them sustain in their career and business. Students need to be
empowered to be known as leading design thinkers – not producers, and businessese need employees who want to
bring more strategic innovations and benefit on a long-term basis, rather than a production role whose sole intention is
to make things look good. Art Center needs to create an experience around being the provider of design thinking.

10. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNTHE NEW MARKET SPACE
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EMPOWERING PEOPLE TO USE DESIGN THINKING FOR INNOVATION
Art Center College of Design should position itself in the new market space of
empowering people to use design thinking for innovation. The user experience will
revolve around an ecosystem supporting human-centered design for creative
problem solving.
The ecosystem consists of the physical school, a platform and drawing tablet which
promote leading short- and long-term projects and sharing insights, knowledge and
skills. Whether it is a brief, a sketch, a photo of prototype, drawings of complex
systems and early notes on possible new processes, these bits and pieces of ideas
sketched and photographed on the drawing tablets should be shared on the web early
on to gauge public interest, promote debate and discourse, and invite feedback. The
platform becomes a place where non-linear, interactive education happens between
instructors and students, students and students, the public and students, and business
and students; these roles exchange with one another as students become more
empowered to teach other people their skills and thinking.
The tablet is used to draw ideas accurately and share with other people/institutions/
interested businesses, so students receive feedback and businesses and participate in
seeing what are the newest strategic solutions to their problems. After each student
finishes with the physical tablet, it can be sent back to Art Center or onto a student
who can’t afford Laptops for reuse.
“Today, because of rapid
economic and social
change, schools have to
prepare students for jobs
that have not yet been
created, technologies
that have not yet been
invented and problems
that we don’t yet know
will arise.”

11. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNTHE NEW MARKET SPACE
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EMPOWERING PEOPLE TO USE DESIGN THINKING FOR INNOVATION
Firstly, Art Center has to change its cost structure and make a sliding scale of tuition, from free, accessible, affordable, to
executive and enterprise.
For free users, this opens up possibilities of learning basic concepts of design thinking and hard design problem-solving
skills for free – opening up the market space to many more people, disadvantaged communities, and government
orgnisations new to design thinking.
For users who pay affordable tuition, they get to meet industry professionals who mentor them through the short-term
and long-term projects in business contexts. Funding is provided to make projects as professional as possible, and users
can compete and collaborate with people from other disciplines/schools interested in the same projects online.
NGO, impoverished or other communities who cannot afford to pay consultants and think tanks should be able to invite
students to work on long-term residence projects in their settings in exchange for true social design learning experience.
Users on the scale of businesses, venture capitalists, government and enterprises pay a fee to find all the world’s
solutions being shaped, step-by-step, before their eyes. They can also see each participant’s working style and decide
on hiring without having to go through headhunting agencies. Alternatively, they can also donate equipment, materials
and human resources to make projects happen in less privileged areas of the world.
Some of the cost being taken out of the business include maintaining a separate campus for part-time studies; maintain
physical computer labs; and much of the cost is covered by gaining new access usership from paying companies who
choose to view and use the projects being explored on the platform.

12. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNTHE NEW MARKET SPACE
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PARTNER BUSINESSES
Art Center can partner with the following entities for strategic success:
Wacom: to create a series of low-powered, low-priced tablets that replace the need to buy laptops; specifically for the purpose of
sketching, note taking and fleshing out ideas for early exchange and critiquing of ideas out on the web.
Invitation to every educational institution: all students should jointly work on projects with multiple disciplines. For design
thinking to maximize its potential, people should use the collective intelligence amalgamated from generalists and specialists. The
best designed systems, processes and solutions often involve. Art Center should compete and collaborate with these institutions
to recruit, partner with outside organizations, and search for investment in project funding.

13. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNTHE NEW MARKET SPACE
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CONCLUSION
The new market space of empowering people to use design thinking for
innovation expands from only having paying students interested in the aesthetic/
theories/process of design and businesses looking to fill roles, to anyone who needs
human-centered design approach to solve personal, business, community,
government, policy, economic and social problems. It helps Art Center cut across
sectors like human resources (supplying a large network of reliable talent, watching the
process as it happens), venture capital (businesses/people looking to invest and
incubate the next business idea), tablet, and last but not the least, a large domain in
education and consultancy. Art Center becomes a facilitator for making linkages
between interested parties, while providing hardware and platform infrastructure to
network the process.

14. ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGNREFERENCES
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Art Center College of Design. 2012. Art Center View Book: Create Change. [report] Art Center College of Design,
p. 2, 149.
Art Center College of Design. 2011. ART CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 2010-2011. [report] Art Center College of
Design, pp. 22-23.
Artcenter.edu. 2010. Graduation Rates | About | Art Center College of Design | Pasadena, CA | Learn to Create.
Influence Change.. [online] Available at: http://www.artcenter.edu/accd/about/graduation_rates.jsp [Accessed: 19
Jun 2013].
Chuang, M. 1919. QBN - Why do you design?. [online] Available at: http://www.qbn.com/topics/681577/
[Accessed: 19 Jun 2013].
Design Council. 2010. Multi-disciplinary design education in the UK. [report] Design Council, p. 4, 13, 17–29,.
Pryce, V. and Whitaker, B. 2013. Restarting Britain: Design education & growth. [report] Design Commission, p. 30,
37, 46.