Alumni Stories – Andrew Hutton
November 29, 2016
Who are you and what do you do?
Andrew Hutton here – I graduated from the very first cohort of the SDM program back in 2014. In the summer between my first and second year of the program, I joined Accenture, a large, global, strategy, management, and digital consulting firm. I’m still there today, and in my time there I’ve worn multiple hats, from helping organizations transform the way they work, develop new cultures, and most recently, innovate in big ways leveraging the power of connected products and services. Along the way, I helped Accenture build their internal design thinking capability and was a catalyst for design-led thinking and doing. At the same time, I am a professor in the SDM program, having returned to teach after graduating. I teach the SDM in New Economies class to first year students, and this spring will be taking a crack at teaching New Design Firms to second year students.
What project/job/event/research are you currently working on? Please tell us a little about the impetus, content, expected impact of this work.
As a professor, I spend my nights and weekends teaching SDM students about the changing nature of our new economy. As a consultant, I currently am part of a team that helps organizations make the big transition to the digital, connected world we now live in. I do that by helping them create new products and services that are driven by the technologies underpinning the Internet of Things. The unprecedented lever of connectivity offered by this new technology opens up entirely new possibilities for services and experiences – and we help organizations grasp this new reality.
In what ways did the work/research you did at parsons prepare you for that transition and the work you’re doing now?
Our work is inherently systems based – it involves leveraging emerging technology in the service of human needs. To add more difficulty, we need to communicate this massive shift in simple ways and work to build entirely new businesses within client organizations. Systems upon systems. In the SDM program I learned to think – and design – in a systematic way, holding in tension technology, business, and human needs, and to have the tools and language needed to begin shifting these systems into the future.
List any awards, recognitions, etc. that you’ve received since leaving Parsons.
Nothing but great encouragement from colleagues and peers at both
Accenture and
ParsonsHow has the MS-SDM program challenged you to grow as a strategic designer?
The SDM program put me in the game when it comes to strategic design. At the core, I now have the language and mindset to even define what it means to be a designer at the strategic level. Beyond that, I either gained the tools or was exposed to the realities that I would need to master to succeed in this business.
If you were to give one piece of advice to current students, what would it be?
Work as hard as possible to grapple with and understand systems at their biggest scale. Whether it’s assigned reading or a design project, work to make sense (and communicate that sense) of the most disparate pieces of information you can. The world is always going to be more complex than you can handle, but as humans we’ve learned to work within that limitation. Even so, expanding your skill in logical, reasoned, meaningful systems thinking is crucial.
What book are you reading right now?
Lean Startup – I know, not that original. But having read a whole lot of the design literature, I’m finding new inspiration in startup culture, and specifically a system like Lean Startup that combines management with innovation.