Introducing Strategic Design in Education (SDxE): An approach to navigating complexity and ambiguity at the micro, meso and macro layers of higher education institutions

Members of the Higher Education (HE) community have embodied the spirit of designers by identifying needs and creatively responding with speed, agility and ingenuity as a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While these rapid changes were required at the time of the pandemic, the lack of an innovation structure in HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) has become evident. We argue it is necessary to implement an innovation structure in a HEI which can be used to guide all types of innovation, to ensure they are desirable, viable, feasible and suitable from the perspective of all stakeholders. This article builds on the ARRIVE innovation process and uses Vaugh et al.’s Principles for Designing Progress to develop the concept of Strategic Design in Education (SDxE). Through embracing the SDxE approach, the HE community has the potential to not only get comfortable in the complexity and ambiguity which will inevitably result in the HEI sector for decades to come, but have an opportunity to shape it into something more desirable. We propose that SDxE offers an actionable scaffold for Human-Centered innovation, one that holds the potential to affect change, improve collaboration and produce more successful outcomes across the micro, meso and macro layers of HEIs.