IDEO colleague Ryan Jacoby has recently started a great blog about business design at do_matic. His post on a 2012 curriculum for a degree in business design is genius. Judging from the early response there seem to be plenty of people like me who would love to sign up. This looks like the education I wish I had had as a designer. The only problem is I think I would have needed my seven years in art school to accumulate some of the skills necessary to consider applying to Ryan's program.

The thorny issue is how do design thinkers get the breadth and depth of education they need to tackle the systemic problems that face us?

Do we start with depth, a more traditional undergraduate degree in industrial design or engineering let's say, and then follow it with the breadth in the form of Ryan's Masters in Business Design? Or maybe it needs to be the other way around. A great liberal arts degree with business design as a major followed by the depth building experience of a more traditional design masters. I suspect that neither of these proves to be the ideal recipe and that we need many more varied paths to accumulate knowledge and experience.