Specializing Master in Strategic Design
Milan, Italy
Master degree
DURATION
16 months
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
30 Aug 2026
EARLIEST START DATE
Oct 2026
TUITION FEES
EUR 15,500
STUDY FORMAT
Blended
Key Summary
About: The Specializing Master in Strategic Design at POLI.design blends MBA methodologies with design-school practices to train students in product-service system design, design thinking, innovation management, sustainable design and business-model development. It focuses on visioning, sensing innovation and creating solutions embedded in new business models for products, services and communication strategies across companies, institutions and nonprofits.
Career Outcomes: Graduates enter roles as innovation and design specialists and as integrators of design processes. Typical positions include marketing director, R&D manager, industrial designer, product engineer, service designer, design manager, design director, project manager, product manager, retail manager, brand manager and innovation consultant.
The Specializing Master combines for learning purposes the methodologies of a classic MBA with those typical of a design school oriented towards innovation.
Strategic Design is a design activity that concerns the Product Service System, i.e. the integrated body of products, services, and communication strategies that either an actor or a network of actors (companies, institutions, nonprofit organizations, etc.) generate and develop to create value. It is often claimed that technological innovation, cultural and economic globalization, and the transition to environmental sustainability generate problems and opportunities. It is also repeatedly stated that the possibility to avoid the former and to exploit the latter requires the development of three core skills: visioning, sensing innovation, creating solutions embedded in new business models. It calls for the ability to design products and services whose success today anticipates what will be or may have to be, the norm of tomorrow.
The social demand for a new generation of products and services, coherent with current socio-cultural transformations, and their sustainable development becomes an opportunity for companies able to operate in the context of this new design mindset. This unique meeting of design and company strategy: strategic design.
Title Released
At the end of the programme, once the final examination has been passed, the 1st level Specializing Master Strategic Design. Building new businesses and strategies through design diploma will be issued, with the related achievement of 60 CFU/ECTS.
Didactic Plan
The Specializing Master is structured in theoretical modules, workshop, projects and laboratories. The Master concludes with a curricular internship lasting 500 hours.
- 1st in Italy
- 3rd in Europe
- 6th in the World
Politecnico di Milano - QS Ranking 2025 in Art&Design category
The programme of the Specializing Master in Strategic Design aims to build the foundations of a specific and expert competence relating to the issues surrounding strategic design and to innovation and design of the product-system. The Specializing Master aims to produce experts and consultants capable of carrying out a design and management role in the innovation process of the product-system. In particular, the programme proposes training on integration of product, services and communication components and developing specific skills aimed at improving the overall process quality (that is, production methods and contexts) and that of the results (that is, that of the actual and perceived quality) that set the cultural identity characteristics, sensoriality a sustainability of the designed solutions.
These solution thereby distinguish themselves for their ability to combine product quality with that of their environment and the social forms that create them.
The objective is therefore to instil in participants a design capacity (problem setting and problem solving), an ability to envisage and generate ideas, produce and communicate images, initiative in terms of being able to identify the methods, resources and partners to reach a pre-established objective, an aptitude for managing complexity by integrating resources and actors in an innovative design process and, in turn, knowing how to integrate with them, vision as an ability to select information, an ability to identify trends, build a personal point of view and produce scenarios, acquire the tools needed to understand and recognise the “range of possibilities” within which to operate and the related innovative factors; acquire the skills needed to design and manage innovation of the various product-system components; acquire multimedia tools to present personal ideas and designs with the help of various communication support; develop and improve the skills to take on and innovate the intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics of the cultural identity of product systems.
The programme aims to build the foundations of a specific and expert competence relating to the issues surrounding strategic design and to innovation and design of the product-system.
FAMILY SUPPORT: -50%
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POLI.NETWORK: -50%
A promotion designed to strengthen the bond and identity among members of the Politecnico di Milano community.
BACK TO SCHOOL: -1.000€ on Specializing Masters
The discount for those who have already trusted POLI.design and Polimi, and wish to return to study and build their future.
SUPPLIERS
A promotion for those who collaborate or have collaborated with POLI.design. Our way to say thanks and share knowledge.
PER MERITO
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The placement identifies two main macro-professional profiles: “innovation and design specialists” (marketing directors, R&D managers, industrial designers, and product engineers, services and multimedia solutions designers) and “integrators of innovative and design processes” (design managers, design directors, project managers, product managers, retail managers, brand managers, consultants for product-system innovation).