NEC Corporation announced the opening of the “NEC Academy for Future Creation Design,” a center for developing human resources that are well-versed in digital transformation (DX). The academy will be dedicated to imparting service design skills and mind sets that leverage “design thinking” and promote the advancement of DX. NEC has already provided training for more than 2,500 employees in design thinking and aims to accept 1,500 participants to the academy over the next three years.
In recent years, with the rapid social implementation and utilization of DX and the digitization of the economy, the shortage of DX human resources has become a major issue worldwide.
NEC developed the “NEC Design Thinking Framework” in collaboration with Business Models Inc. (BMI) as a business design methodology for DX. BMI has a proven global record in the business design field and NEC has already deployed the framework internally. In the newly established academy, students will learn how to use the processes and tools included in the methodology, as well as a mind set for using the tools, and systematically learning the business creation method for DX through first hand practices.
Specifically, NEC’s Design Thinking Consultant Team will be offering three courses: the “Practical Training Collaboration Course,” where students learn new business development and business reform methods by participating in customer projects and collaborating together, the “Practical Coaching Course,” where NEC’s Design Thinking Consulting Team promotes projects while giving advice based on training content individually designed for customer’s DX-related business issues, and the “Individual Training Course” where students can learn the tools and methods of using NEC’s Design Thinking Framework in a short period of time.
