PrototyPIng desIgn 161 161 S u m m e r , 2 0 0 0 With a look bordering on panic, Weatherhead School of Management Professor Richard Boland Jr. watched as Matt Fineout, an architect with Gehry & Associates, casually tore up plans for a new school building . . . . . . Boland and Fineout had been struggling for two full days to remove some 5,500 square feet from the fl oor plan designed by star architect Frank Gehry, while leaving room needed for meeting spaces and offi ce equipment. At the end of the marathon planning session, Boland had breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s fi nally done,” he thought. But at that very moment, Fineout rose from his chair, ripped the document apart, and tossed the scraps into a trash bin, not bothering to retain a single trace of the pair’s hard labor. He responded to Professor Boland's shocked expression with a gentle shrug and a soft remark. “We’ve shown we can do it; now we need to think of how we want to do it.” Looking back, Boland describes the incident as an extreme example of the relentless approach to inquiry he experienced while working with the Gehry group on the new Weatherhead building. During the design phase, Gehry and his team made hun- dreds of models with different materials and of varying sizes, sim- ply to explore new directions. Boland explains that the goal of this prototyping activity was far more than the mere testing or proving of ideas. It was a methodology for exploring different possibilities until a truly good one emerged. He points out that prototyping, as practiced by the Gehry group, is a central part of an inquiry pro- cess that helps participants gain a better sense of what is missing in the initial understanding of a situation. This leads to completely new possibilities, among which the right one can be identifi ed. For Professor Boland, the experience with Gehry & Associates was transformative. He now understands how design techniques, including prototyping, contribute to fi nding better solutions for the entire spectrum of business problems. Together with fellow professor Fred Collopy and other colleagues, Boland is now spear- heading the concept of Manage by Designing: the integration of design thinking, skills, and experiences into Weatherhead’s MBA curriculum. Here, students use tools of design to sketch alterna- tives, follow through on problem situations, transcend traditional boundaries, and prototype ideas. bmgen_final.indd 161 6/15/10 5:43 PM