Positive Design: Using Design Thinking as a Creative Process for Enhancing Project Outcomes

This PDW brings together scholars and practitioners working on creativity, design thinking

and strategy to explore, debate, and illustrate the ways in which design thinking is being used

as a creative process to positively impact people as the beneficiaries and stakeholders of

projects. The PDW is the first of a series of PDWs to be proposed at AOM over the next

three years seeking to bring the design thinking and positive organizational scholarship

communities together to advance knowledge, theorizing and research on how design thinking

can impact projects to improve society and have a positive and sustainable impact on people,

planet and profit. The workshop will be an interactive, design thinking led session and will

produce micro-projects to advance the ‘positive design’ cause within the academy. This

session will also be supported by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and will seek to

broaden and build networks across AOM, SMS and PMI to advance creative approaches to

project design with a focus on beneficiaries and stakeholders.