Farsons Group recently collaborated with Leeds University Business School to bring a Design Thinking Executive Masterclass to the Group's senior management. This programme was designed by LUBS for Farsons in partnership with practitioners from IBM and was delivered at the Group's premises.

Design thinking is a customer-centric or human-centric iterative approach to problem solving and subsequent innovation. Championed by organisations such as Ideo and Stanford D. School, this approach borrows from a variety of disciplines including psychology, ethnography, computer science and organisational learning. Design thinking is recognised globally as an effective tool to tackle challenging issues and has the potential to unleash creative energies and radically improve processes.

Tony Morgan, who facilitated the programme for the management team, has 30 years of experience working in IT and technology-related roles, having worked at IBM since 1998, with roles including chief IT architect, Innovation leader, chief Innovation officer, chief Technology officer, for specific areas of IBM's business and most recently executive architect.

In 2016, Tony was appointed by the Royal Academy of Engineering as visiting professor for Innovation in Industry with the University of Leeds. Tony is also the author of the book Collaborative Innovation: How clients and service providers can work by design to achieve it.

This masterclass is part of the Leadership Development programme at Farsons for management and reiterates the commitment the Group embraces to develop its people at all levels.