Leading Change by Design is a brand new post-academic programme, developed by the department of product development at the Faculty of Design Sciences (University of Antwerp), to combine leadership development with the mindset and methodologies of design, empowering you to tackle complexity, learn through experimentation, and cultivate a purpose-driven approach to leadership.

Learn to master the design tools and techniques to inspire action and co-create sustainable transformation. This is your opportunity to shift perspectives, embrace learning by doing, and lead impactful change through design!

Is this for you?

Step into the world of co-creating change:

• Are you a curious, open-minded individual who thrives on exploring new ideas and uncovering hidden opportunities in the world around you?
• Do you flourish when collaborating with others?
• Are you prepared to breakdown old ways of thinking and operating?
• Does interdisciplinary thinking come naturally to you?

Programme highlights:

• Balanced approach: A learning journey split into 25% theory, 25% applied frameworks, and 50% hands-on, challenge-based projects.
• Methodology: Learn and apply core principles of Service Design and Systemic Design to real-world scenarios.
• Self-development track: Build self-awareness and cultivate a mindset of self-leadership.
• Core modules: Explore themes like sensemaking in uncertainty, navigating complexity, leading and creating change, and communicating for impact.
• Skills development: Gain expertise in complex problem solving, interdisciplinary collaboration, co-creation, agility, creativity, scoping, and leadership.
• Expert guidance: Be inspired by over 15 thought leaders and practitioners from academia and industry.


The programme is structured around two core methodologies applied in two challenge-based projects, a self-development track, and five thematical modules. Together, these components provide a comprehensive learning experience that balances theory, applied learning, and personal growth.

What will you learn?

You will learn how to tackle organizational and societal challenges by mastering methodologies that enable you to reframe problems and think in terms of opportunities and solutions. You’ll gain practical skills to analyze complexity, understand systems, and design impactful interventions to address real-world issues with confidence and creativity.

You will develop hands-on expertise in generating ideas and co-creating solutions, learning to navigate the uncertainty and ambiguity that comes with innovation.

Through this learning journey, you’ll understand how to build and leverage networks to drive systemic change. You’ll gain the skills to foster collaboration across disciplines and act as a catalyst for transformation. Beyond technical skills, you’ll cultivate a proactive mindset, and the personal agency needed to take meaningful, constructive initiatives within organizations, innovation consultancies, or broader societal contexts.

Why design?

If you're already a designer, feel free to skip this part. However, if you're new to the world of design, here’s what you need to know.

For many, design is synonymous with stylish objects or beautiful lifestyle products, but design is also a process and a mindset. Over time, it has transformed into a creative problem-solving discipline, applying its methods, tools, and techniques to areas beyond products, designing services, processes, organizations, and entire systems. Today, design drives innovation, delivering solutions not only in physical artifacts but also in intangible applications across diverse fields.

What sets design apart is its interdisciplinary approach, integrating human-centered, economic, sustainability and technological perspectives into comprehensive solutions. Design thrives on creative synthesis, going beyond merely analyzing the world as it is to envision and experimenting how it could be. It excels in lateral thinking, reframing challenges, generating ideas, prototyping solutions, and validating them to ensure the best possible implementation in the real world.

At its core, design flourishes collaboration and co-creation, emphasizing teamwork and synergy to address challenges from a holistic perspective. Yet, when it comes to solving complex problems, no single discipline can succeed alone. True transformation relies on the combined expertise of many fields working together toward shared goals.

While this programme won’t make you an experienced designer in a year, it will equip you with the skills to expand your disciplinary expertise, adopt a design mindset, and broaden your perspective on how to create meaningful change.