Professor Bae Yu-il of Dong-A University Publishes 'Public Service Revolution Solved with Design Thinking and Agile'

Dong-A University (President Lee Hae-woo) announced on the 22nd that Professor Bae Yu-il of the Department of Public Administration has published the book Revolutionizing Public Services through Design Thinking and Agile (Daeyoung Munhwasa).

Public Service Revolution Solved with Design Thinking and Agile.

This book introduces many cases to help university students, public officials, as well as those in private companies, industrial design, design, and management fields easily understand ‘design thinking’ and ‘agile’ (a management strategy for responding swiftly to frequent changes). Anyone in academic disciplines related to problem-solving such as public administration, policy studies, industrial design, political science, international development cooperation, and urban regeneration can find it engaging.

‘Design thinking’ is an effort to solve problems through user-centered thinking that arises from deep empathy for humans and has spread widely. This book extensively covers both private and public sectors, including innovative companies famous for design success such as Denmark’s MindLab, Finland’s Helsinki Design Lab, Singapore’s Design Council, Netflix, General Electric, IDEO, PepsiCo, as well as failure cases like Blockbuster.

Professor Bae said, “In an era where it is no longer easy to solve problems with 19th-20th century bureaucratic methods, I began to take an interest in design thinking from the concern of how public organizations can provide better services to citizens, how they can respond more agilely, and how they can offer services that citizens want.” He added, “I wanted to fully capture the background and context from which design thinking and agile emerged.”

Professor Bae earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Southern California (USC), served as a postdoctoral researcher at the National University of Singapore (NUS), was a professor in the Social Sciences Department at Singapore Management University (SMU), and a professor at the Graduate School of Policy at Fulbright University Vietnam (FUV). Since 2021, he has been with the Department of Public Administration at Dong-A University.

While at Singapore Management University, he created a Capstone seminar program for undergraduates majoring in public management and public policy, which later expanded and was reorganized into SMU’s flagship program ‘SMU-X.’

Additionally, during his tenure as a professor at Fulbright University Vietnam’s Graduate School of Policy, he experimented with research and teaching based on the idea that ‘design thinking could be a so-called game changer’ for students. He also taught design thinking to Filipino public officials through the KOICA-KDI training program for developing country civil servants.

Professor Bae stated, “Design thinking is highly social scientific, and the concept of design (planning) is not unfamiliar even in academic fields dealing with the public sector such as public administration and policy studies.” He added, “I included abundant cases from both private and public sectors because I thought a book systematically explaining design thinking in these areas was necessary. I hope it will be used as a textbook in universities and as a reference book in practice.”

Professor Bae Yu-il, Dong-A University.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.