Rapid prototyping, by definition, in the world of technology and manufacturing is simply the speedy creation of a full-scale model. The word itself has itself origins in the Latin language, proto meaning original and typus meaning model.
In manufacturing and technology based companies, rapid prototyping is used to create 3-dimensional models of a product. The model is a visual object that can be handled, analyzed, and reconstructed over and over again based on the digitally rendered item. Rapid prototyping can be used to test a product design before being mass produced and any adjustments can be made before larger investment is needed.
How can rapid prototyping be used or taught in academia?
Higher education institutions could work to improve academic mobility and explore alternative business models to balance the tension between career-oriented education facilitators and broader based liberal arts programs as a way to attract students and help them earn a degree.
Business schools especially can use rapid prototyping not only in the structure of their institution in regarding to modernizing their curriculum, but in the classroom itself, where students, entrepreneurs, innovators, and future leaders learn the fundamentals of business. Learning how to rapid prototype teaches students to relinquish the fear that has been embedded by past generations of business leaders and corporations to embrace a culture of rigorous systematic testing. This traditional way of thinking often impedes or unnecessarily introduces barriers to innovation.
Rather, rapid prototyping is highly effective and has fostered its own world-changing discoveries, most notably in the tech industry. In this model of learning, students become the designer, developing ideas and products that meet a standard of “good enough.” It may sound indolent, but it is merely an initial solution, setting an idea in motion that can then be regularly, rapidly, and continuously improved upon. It provides students a new way to discover, design, and develop ideas in the realm of business into products and services.
The Master in Business Innovation at GBSB Global Business School has been designed to give students these exact skills to turn ideas into actions through various models, rapid prototyping on being one of the many.
Rapid technological advancements, the information revolution and increasing globalization and digitalization of business activities has amplified competition among countries for export markers, capital, R&D, and skilled workers. The progress of service, information, and knowledge societies is a movement that is very similar to that of the industrial society and the emergence of textile manufacturing during the nineteenth century in terms of the social impact it has had. With this appearance of knowledge society comes innovation – “the ability to implement a new or significantly improved product, good or service, or a new organizational method in business practices, workplace organization or external relations”. Innovation and the restructuring of traditional methods is helping to make wide strides in the world of business and how it will progress into the future.
GBSB Global Business School takes an alternative approach to business education, we offer students a program focused on innovation, creativity, and design thinking. The Master in Business Innovation is a degree which will open doors to a new world of business that will be even more fast-paced and technologically driven than ever before.
Many companies today are pursuing managers who are able to monitor, assess, and manage their processes of innovation and development. This master program in Barcelona will take you through the creative processes of how to generate new breakthrough ideas and how to assess these projects critically using various methods that will enhance students ability to be highly competitive and successful in the real-world.
