Certified Design Thinking for Innovation - CDTI
The Certified Design Thinking for Innovation (CDTI) certification offers product managers, designers, and innovation professionals an opportunity to demonstrate an advanced understanding of Design Thinking and key practices related to customer discovery.
Design Thinking is a movement that has surged to prominence because it allows teams to research and design solutions that are customer-centric in nature by focusing on needs, expectations, and emotional insights. Rather than aiming at the creation of a perfect solution based on a list of requirements, Design Thinking offers an iterative cycle of ideation and validation, whose goal is to design solutions that meet the customer’s needs. It works best in the white space of product innovation where a clear solution is not available, and sometimes the customer problem may not be fully defined or understood.
The Certified Design Thinking for Innovation certification affirms the individual’s understanding of the key principles of Design Thinking and proficiency at applying Design Thinking methods to drive innovation and creative problem solving, including:
- Apply Design Thinking to solve complex problems
- Drive innovation within your team or organization
- Spark a customer-centric focus in your design and product teams
- Infuse a culture of agility through rapid validation of new ideas
- Base decisions on real insights from customers and rapidly build prototypes for validation
Earn a CDTI certification
Those who earn a Spark Engine certification in Design Thinking for Innovation (CDTI credential) indicate a thorough understanding of principles and practices related to Design Thinking and creative problem solving with a focus on ideation, human centered design, and rapid validation of new ideas. The Spark Engine training program and certification process are rigorous to ensure that those who pass the qualification fully understand Design Thinking and are able to apply the concepts immediately to be more effective in their jobs.
Regardless of one’s career stage, certification as a CDTI is a valuable professional asset that distinguishes you as having the knowledge and ability to drive focused and purposeful innovation projects inside a business enterprise.
Format
In this highly interactive and hands-on class, students learn the principles and practices of Design Thinking with a keen focus on innovation:
- Key concepts of Design Thinking and human-centered design
- Customer discovery techniques, including empathy interviews and observations
- Design effective interview guides
- Define and refine your customers with effective User Personas
- Apply ideation techniques for insights and solutions generation
- Use How Might We statements and Creative Prompts to ideation of new solutions
- Rapidly validate ideas with prototypes
- Refine your solutions to satisfy customer needs
- Learn Design Thinking core practices as created by IDEO and Stanford d.school
We believe that real learning comes in three ways: a great training program, shared experiences with other participants, and hands-on practice. This is why we deliver this class in-person only, so that you can take full advantage of a rich and deep learning experience.
Participants in a Design Thinking for Innovation program get follow-up one-on-one coaching for support on how to apply the practices to their real-life projects. The program includes 3 coaching sessions for a period of 6 months after the class.
Certification
At the end of the training program, participants earn a Certified Design Thinking for Innovation (CDTI) certification. This certification validates their participation to the class and the learning of foundational principles and practices for applying Design Thinking to real innovation projects.
There is no exam. The program is designed to be highly experiential as we believe that real learning comes from experience, not from passive studying of concepts.
WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU
Become a kick*ss product innovator
Best practices
Learn best practices to drive product innovation and development for your product, with your team, and within your organization.
Hands-on practice
Immediately apply practices and mindset through real-life examples, case studies, and hands-on exercises on real projects.
Certification
Stand out from the crowd of innovation so-so experts with a Spark Engine certification. You earn it upon completion of the program.
The Spark Engine program at-a-glance
Well-balanced program that focuses on both practices and mindsets
Agile, Design Thinking, Lean, team empowerment to drive innovation
Skills and expertise to apply to your job, not just empty theories
Drive results and bring change in your organization
Who should apply?
The Certified Design Thinking for Innovation (CDTI) program expands expertise and mindset for those in roles responsible for driving design and product innovation within their organization, such as:
- Product managers, product owners, and entrepreneurs looking to expand their expertise in product innovation and creative problem solving.
- Product leaders who want to understand Design Thinking and how to drive product innovation within the organization.
- Certified Scrum Product Owners (CSPOs) and Certified Product Innovation Professionals (CPIPs) that are seeking to develop further expertise in human-centered design and Design Thinking to drive innovation with their teams and their organizations.