The future belongs to people who can recognize opportunities, solve complex problems, and turn ideas into real-world value.

Wichita State University's Master of Innovation Design (MID) is a 30-credit-hour, interdisciplinary graduate degree designed for people who want to do more than adapt to change. They want to lead it.

Whether your goal is to launch a startup, develop new products and services, advance your career, or lead innovation inside an organization, MID gives you the tools, experience, and confidence to make things happen.

We don't believe innovation should stop at generating ideas. Students learn how to identify opportunities, understand customer needs, develop solutions, test assumptions, and bring ideas to life.

Learn it. Build it. Test it. Improve it. Repeat.

Innovation requires more than technical expertise. It takes the ability to connect ideas, understand people, work across disciplines, and turn uncertainty into opportunity.

The MID curriculum combines human-centered design, emerging technologies, business strategy, and hands-on problem-solving to develop capabilities employers and entrepreneurs need.

Students gain practical experience in:

• Design Thinking and Human-Centered Innovation: Identify unmet needs, understand users, and develop solutions that create meaningful value.

• Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation: Explore how AI, emerging technologies, and digital tools can improve processes, products, services, and business models.

• Product Development and Innovation Management: Move ideas from concept through prototyping, testing, validation, and implementation.

• Agile Methodologies and Rapid Experimentation: Work iteratively, learn quickly, reduce risk, and adapt solutions based on evidence.

• Systems Thinking and Complex Problem-Solving: Understand how people, processes, technologies, and organizations interact.

• Leadership and Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Bring together different perspectives, communicate effectively, make informed decisions, and lead teams through uncertainty.

The objective isn't simply to learn innovation methods. It's to develop the ability to apply them repeatedly to new problems, technologies, industries, and opportunities throughout your career.

Some of the best innovations happen when people with different experiences tackle the same challenge.

MID brings together graduate students from engineering, business, technology, design, manufacturing, communications, and other disciplines. Students enter the program with established strengths and learn to apply those strengths in new ways.

Working in interdisciplinary teams, students gain experience collaborating with people who think differently, approach problems from different perspectives, and bring different technical and professional skills.

Through collaboration across Wichita State University's academic colleges and industry partners, students learn how to connect expertise, challenge assumptions, and create solutions that might never emerge from a single discipline.

You bring your expertise. We help you expand what you can do with it.

The Master of Innovation Design is a 30-credit-hour graduate program typically completed in two years, with evening courses designed to accommodate working professionals.

Rather than requiring every student to follow the same academic path, MID provides a flexible learning experience that connects coursework to individual interests, professional goals, and career opportunities.

The program features:

• 30 credit hours: A combination of core innovation coursework and individualized electives.

• Flexible course formats: Courses generally range from 8 to 16 weeks, with many offered in the evening.

• Applied learning opportunities: Eligible project-based experiences allow students to apply innovation methods to authentic challenges.

• Individualized development: Students work with faculty to select learning experiences that support their interests and professional goals.

• Industry and research connections: Opportunities to engage with businesses, entrepreneurs, faculty researchers, and interdisciplinary project teams.

Whether you are interested in user experience design, innovation management, artificial intelligence, digital transformation, entrepreneurship, or new product development, MID helps you build a combination of capabilities aligned with your ambitions.

Innovation isn't something you master by watching someone else do it.

MID emphasizes experiential, project-based learning, where students apply what they learn to problems that matter.

Students may work on challenges involving digital products, emerging technologies, new business concepts, manufacturing processes, customer experiences, or organizational transformation.

Through these projects, students learn to:

1. Discover: Research problems, understand stakeholders, and uncover opportunities.

2. Define: Identify the right problem to solve and determine what success should look like.

3. Develop: Generate concepts, build prototypes, and explore possible solutions.

4. Validate: Test assumptions, gather feedback, and evaluate feasibility and value.

5. Deliver: Refine solutions, communicate recommendations, and develop implementation or commercialization strategies.

Students also have opportunities to collaborate with university faculty, research initiatives, startups, and industry partners to explore how new ideas and technologies can become viable products, services, or businesses.

The goal is to graduate with more than academic knowledge. It's to build practical experience, demonstrated capabilities, and a portfolio of work that shows what you can accomplish.

Artificial intelligence, automation, emerging technologies, and changing business models are reshaping the workforce.

Technical skills will remain important, but long-term career success will increasingly depend on the ability to identify opportunities, adapt to new technologies, collaborate across disciplines, and create value.

The Master of Innovation Design helps students develop capabilities relevant to careers in:

• Innovation management and strategy

• Product development and product management

• User experience (UX) and human-centered design

• AI-enabled business transformation

• Digital innovation and emerging technologies

• Entrepreneurship and startup development

• Business consulting and organizational transformation

• Research, development, and commercialization

MID isn't designed around preparing students for one specific job title.

It's designed to help them develop the capabilities to succeed across multiple roles, industries, and career transitions.

Every MID student arrives with a different background, different interests, and a different definition of success.

Our faculty work with students to identify their strengths, develop new capabilities, connect with relevant university and industry resources, and pursue projects that support their personal and professional ambitions.

For some students, success means launching a business. For others, it means moving into leadership, changing careers, developing a new product, or becoming the person their organization turns to when a complex problem needs solving.

Whatever your direction, the program is designed to help you move from learning about innovation to actually making it happen.

If you enjoy solving problems, exploring emerging technologies, working with talented people, and turning ideas into something valuable, the Master of Innovation Design may be the right next step.

Don't just prepare for the future. Help create it.

Explore the Master of Innovation Design at Wichita State University and discover what you could build next.