SEOUL, KOREA - In early June, the Innovation Design Workshop was held by IE Business School in partnership with AIESEC Korea in Seoul. Every year, professors of the IE Business School voluntarily visit Korea to attend the workshop aimed to encourage Korean youth’s challenging spirits and to broaden their perspectives. IE in Madrid, ranked first in the European Business School Ranking for 2012 by the Financial Times, is best-known for improving students’ innovation and entrepreneurship.
Max Oliva, director of social impact management in IE Business School, emphasized the need for innovation through collaboration in his lecture, “Design thinking for optimized innovation”. He discussed possible methods for rooting innovation into our corporate culture through various experiments and discussions.
During the experiment, students were told to draw what they thought an ideal wallet looked like, and to introduce their idea to the class. Next, they were grouped with a partner and were again told to draw an ideal wallet, this time for their partner. In order to figure out what their partners, a possible client, would desire, they needed to engage in continuous discussion and collaboration with each other. Later, they created a model wallet with a piece of paper and shared their ideas with the class and the lecturer. Throughout the whole process, a multitude of innovative ideas came out as students collaborated with their partners and shared the ideas with the entire class.
Abraham Lee, a professor at Handong University and a Ph.D holder in IE, said that Korean is still lacking in innovation, a common point throughout the nation’s history. While many European countries sought adventure in other countries for diverse reasons, Korean remained in a closed society for thousands of years. Even though many Koreans these days travel overseas for education and employment, they still find difficulties networking with foreigners and absorbing different cultures.
“IE Business School, in this sense, provides good opportunities for students to effectively share their ideas through continuous interaction, discussion, debate, and collaboration. Over 90% of the students are from overseas countries including the United States, European countries, the Middle East, South American and Asia,” Professor Lee said.
“We all have a particular bias within a boundary of people we know and the environment where we live. Thus, the future of an organization is generally determined by its history and past leadership. In order for Korean people to adapt to the fast changing, dynamic environment, they should put more effort and focus towards escaping the past and eliminating bias. Understanding others and fostering collaboration will spark creativity and innovation, making Korean companies globally competitive,” Lee said.
