MBADesign Strategy
Overview
An MBA at the crossroads of innovation, design, and impact
Fully immersed in the culture and ethos of San Francisco, the MBA in Design Strategy (DMBA) program is a launchpad for students to design their careers all while learning to lead complex solutions for twenty-first-century challenges. The STEM-designated, low-residency MBA in Design Strategy program calls to innovators and those with the entrepreneurial spirit to move their practice forward through hands-on learning and creative problem solving.
Our unique setting as the only MBA within a leading art and design school allows for the unexpected. When design and strategy combine, no day is business as usual. Guided by expert faculty who are industry leaders from nearly every professional sector, students collaborate together and with clients outside the classroom to create real-world solutions today. Our alumni go on to take the helm in fields across the globe. They redefine boundaries, build organizations from the ground up, and harness creative tools to foster sustainable change.
“The DMBA does a really great job at combining both qualitative and quantitative courses. I’m not only learning about the logistics in business and administration, but also learning how to become a more thoughtful human being.”
(MBA Design Strategy 2017)
Studios & Shops
Access resources that amplify your ambitions
CCA is an interdisciplinary community that centers making, which means the depth of our MBA program is unparalleled. We actively practice design strategy every semester through a pathway of studio courses that teach how to use market insights to build products, create experiences, and launch businesses. In addition to dedicated studio space for heads-down work, students have access to model-making, rapid prototyping, and multimedia technology for the range of projects they take on to bring this work to life.
Faculty
Industry experience informs every lesson
DMBA faculty bring expertise from their outside practices to the classroom, ensuring that students learn the most current methods. Together, through focused student and faculty collaboration, we take advantage of the space between disciplines and reimagine problem-solving in ways that are unconventional and unexpected.
Justin Lokitz, Chair of MBA Design Strategy
Chair Justin Lokitz, author of the best-selling books Design a Better Business: New Tools, Skills, and Mindset for Strategy and Innovation and Business Model Shifts: Six Ways to Create New Value for Customers, is an entrepreneur, strategic advisor, and technologist. He spent more than 20 years working inside large corporate organizations, like Oracle and Autodesk, as well as consulting for similar-sized organizations. What he noticed was that most of these companies had lost their sense of who they created value for—their customers—and in many cases no longer knew how to design for customer needs using the human-centered creative approach that design methods offer. As both an alum and chair of the DMBA program, Justin uses his understanding of business models, rapid prototyping, and iterative problem-solving to create and deliver value for people, empower students, and foster productive partnerships.
Curriculum
Business is different inside an art school
Ranked as one of the best design programs in the world, our curriculum starts with asking great questions, examines the increasing complexity of markets and products, pushes students creatively, and culminates with every student considering the go-to-market strategies for a venture that is meaningful to them. View sample courses.
MBA Design Strategy
Year 1: Fall Semester
- Financial and Managerial Accounting
- 3.0 units
- Managerial Economics
- 3.0 units
- Live Exchange
- 3.0 units
- Market Insight Studio
- 4.5 units
- Data Lab
- 1.5 units
Year 1: Spring Semester
- Managerial Finance
- 3.0 units
- Sustainability Studio
- 3.0 units
- Operations & Systems
- 3.0 units
- Innovation Studio
- 4.5 units
- Ethics/AI Lab
- 1.5 units
Year 2: Fall Semester
- Brand & Marketing Strategy
- 3.0 units
- Strategic Foresight Studio
- 3.0 units
- Business Models and Stakeholders
- 3.0 units
- Experiences Studio
- 4.5 units
- Story Lab
- 1.5 units
Year 2: Spring Semester
- Business Law and Negotiations
- 3.0 units
- Strategic Management
- 3.0 units
- DSMBA Elective
- 3.0 units
- Venture Studio
- 4.5 units
- Leadership Lab
- 1.5 units
Total 60.0 units
Careers
Transform your capacity to lead
The MBA in Design Strategy can help you identify your purpose, offer tools to deepen a career you’ve already started, start you on a new venture built alongside your peers, or take you to new jobs entirely—some that might not even exist yet. The practice you develop at CCA will transform your ambition, leadership, and capacity to make change.
Our graduates are collaborative, creative, brave, and engaged, actively building the field of design strategy as it evolves. They can be found at big banks, established tech companies, unicorns, startups, major foundations, government agencies, and running their own plays. Alumni also return as faculty, guest lecturers, and clients, remaining deeply involved and forming a network of support, introductions, exchange, and growth.
Potential careers paths
- Design strategist
- Business designer
- Product marketing manager
- UX strategist
- Product manager
- Business consultant
- Content strategist
- Brand strategist
- Design and innovation lead
- Customer experience designer
- Entrepreneurs
- Agency founders
“I wanted a practical way to bridge the gap between the designers and corporate counterparts of the business world, and other programs seemed focused on either one or the other, but rarely both.”
(MBA Design Strategy 2017)
