Steering digital maturity: a design-based educational model for empowering digital creativity and future skills.

The demand for talents capable of navigating the complex digital landscape while aligning innovation with human needs is on the rise. Digital creativity, intended as the human ability to create innovative and original digital outcomes, stands as one of the main abilities that future leaders should master to guide enterprises towards digital maturity. As educators, how can we train digital creativity to achieve a digital maturity? The article introduces 4 main critical dimensions to empower students’ digital creativity and retraces how these have guided the implementation of a design-oriented educational model to train digitally responsible future professionals. The DC4DM action model is presented as well as its application in a real-life educational setting: the Learning Lab. The educational experience is thoroughly described from the organizational perspective to demonstrate the effectiveness of a learning experience tailored for students to work closely with professional realities, tackle realworld challenges and co-create visions of digital futures.