Want to get schooled on innovation and higher education? Talk with Andy Boynton. Boynton is the John and Linda Powers Family Dean at the Boston College Carroll School of Management. He’s also a long-term friend of ours (we helped BC redesign their core curriculum). As we’ve been lately thinking about the higher-ed experience, we decided to invite him onto The Resonance Test. In this informal-and-informed conversation, our Toby Bottorf, who knows a thing or two about college administrators, chatted with Boynton about the fundamental nature of design thinking, in and out of the classroom. Boynton talked about ideas and competitive advantage and the importance of the “connective tissue” of innovation. He spoke of time (“Spending time up front makes it faster in the long run. And by the way, it’s gonna bring success faster”) and cost (“Throwing a lot of products and services out and seeing which ones stick sounds very expensive to me”). As for BC’s own innovations, he says things have been “incredibly collaborative all summer across the university” and that they’ve prepared for this by, um, working with us. “You don’t flip a switch and say, ‘OK, let’s innovate together, let’s collaborate. You gotta have the right culture in place.”
Host: Kyle Wing
Editor: Kip Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon
About the Author
Toby BottorfVP, Service and Experience DesignToby joined Continuum to establish a digital design capability, and is now a VP in service design, leading teams to design solutions for complex human and technical systems. His work builds on a career in UX and interface design.
Recent work includes Audi on demand, a premium mobility service; the design of a client communications tool for a financial services company; and the strategy and experience design of a digital coaching platform for a leading American health insurer.
Toby holds a master’s degree in communications design from the Institute of Design (IIT) and a BA in art from Yale University.
Ken GordonChief Communications SpecialistKen makes EPAM Continuum’s work visible to the necessary people. He creates superlative content, works with colleagues to do the same, and employs social networks to share it widely.
A card-carrying humanist, Ken co-founded QuickMuse, the improvisational writing website, and JEDLAB, the Jewish education community. He has written for TheAtlantic.com, the New York Times, and many other pubs.
Ken has an English degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an MA in English from the State University of New York at Albany. He framed both diplomas long ago, but can’t seem to find them now—a fact he considers all-too-human.
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