The Centre for Design Engineering at Cranfield is the internationally-recognised and award-winning centre of excellence for creative design, strategy and leadership. 

Through our postgraduate programme, the Centre - named one of the world's best design schools by BusinessWeek - develops forward thinking professionals with the ability to integrate creativity and design thinking in the business functions of management, engineering, communication and commerce.

We operate globally, integrating creativity into business and acknowledged as a trusted brand for industry in delivering high-impact research. We work with organisations to improve their capabilities to identify new insights and translate them into commercially successful solutions through informed creativity. Our graduates go on to be thought leaders and CEOs of creative companies to lead in excellence of disruptive innovation and transformational research. We continually engage with business and influence industrial and academic design-thinking practices to improve their capabilities to translate insights into commercially successful outcomes.

We are leading pioneering research in the fields of strategic creativity, the Circular Economy, and breakthrough innovation. We integrate educational and research activities to develop new commercial practices. Our approach has made us the design partner of choice for global brands and innovative businesses. The Centre collaborates with international best practice organisations such as Procter and Gamble, Cisco, Oxfam, Whirlpool, SAB Miller and IBM to develop new leading edge tools and innovative product and service solutions.

Our current research deals with the grand challenges that influence design policy, idea management, insight development and sustainable design. Our research expertise is underpinned by our unique 'visual thinking' tools and techniques that help develop the capability to systematically collect, cluster and decode insights.

We believe in the value of ‘design-thinking’ and in doing so provide a new strategic offering to organisations that strive to build and implement new consumer-experiences. This philosophy blends together our excellent teaching and research practice to make dreams a reality. We do this by integrating ‘strategic creativity’ into business through product and service innovation.