Ethical Practices to Guide Innovation (FutureLearn)

Offered by Royal College of Art,
Ethical Practices to Guide Innovation (FutureLearn)

Learn design principles that help innovate through moral and responsible solutions. Be the ethical innovator you want to see in the world. At its core, ethics is concerned with anything that can help or hinder a group’s wellbeing. It follows, then, that creativity and innovation in any industry should be subject to and guided by ethical practices and principles.

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In today’s world, as new ideas are more frequent and more highly prized, it is more important than ever to be an ethical innovator. On this four-week course from the prestigious Royal College of Art (RCA) you’ll learn how to do just that.
Explore ethical design with practical examples
The course begins with detailed explanations of why being an ethical innovator is important, and insightful examples so you can see that in action.
Through real-life case studies, you’ll see how deploying social values (or ethics) can transform unethical practices across a range of different sectors.
You’ll also gain insights into how collaboration can change existing practices from unethical to ethical, and create more opportunities for creativity and innovation.
Get a close-up look at ethical practices
Throughout the course, you’ll get to apply what you’ve learnt about ethical innovation. The engaging lessons will give you the opportunity to apply design-led methods and see how they create value-led creativity.
Ultimately, you’ll see that holistic strategies are best when dealing with both ethical issues and art and design practices. Through this course, you’ll start to develop such strategies for yourself.
Benefit from RCA educators’ diverse expertise
The Royal College of Art is ideally suited to deliver this course. The institution itself a world leader in value-driven creativity and innovation, and this particular training material covers an especially wide range of topics. By the time you finish, you’ll be ready to apply ethical design principles to any project.

Syllabus

Week 1: Creating innovation through social values, business & technology
Week 2: The impact of technology-led innovation in business
Week 3: Methodologies for fostering value-led innovation
Week 4: A culture of value-led innovation

What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • Identify ways in which values and technology can influence innovation and transformations in the professional world.
  • Analyse the impacts of innovation and identify what ethical issues emerge that can misalign businesses from their values.
  • Apply design-led methods and creative thinking to develop a culture of value-led innovation able to transform ethical issues into opportunities.
  • Develop holistic and heuristic strategies to tackle ethical issues that are informed by practices in art and design.

Who is the course for?
This postgraduate-level course is designed for anyone who works or would like to work as an innovator and is interested in exploring ethical practices in their industry. Learners may come from diverse sectors and professions, including, but not limited to, engineering, healthcare, charities and small tech start-ups.

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