Strategic Innovation by Design in Dual Higher Education: Embedding Ethical, Sustainable Leadership Through Work-Integrated Postgraduate Learning

Abstract

Dual higher education increasingly requires pedagogical approaches that integrate academic learning with the complexity of contemporary organisational challenges. This paper examines how the Perception-Blueprint-Envision-Execution (PBEE) framework, a structured design-led pedagogical scaffold, is embedded in work-integrated postgraduate learning to support ethical, sustainable, and systems-oriented innovation. Drawing on the Sustainable Design for Innovation (SDI) module, the paper analyses how PBEE structures learners’ engagement with transformational workplace projects addressing sustainability, responsible leadership, and organisational complexity. Adopting a conceptual and practice-based orientation, the analysis illustrates how PBEE supports structured sensemaking around organisational context, problem framing, responsible solution generation, and reflective engagement with implementation. The paper positions PBEE as a pedagogical model aligned with the development of Future Skills, including reflexivity, problem framing, ethical awareness, stakeholder engagement, and adaptability. In doing so, it contributes a coherent design-led framework for advancing societally relevant and responsible innovation within dual higher education.