Design Thinking Process For Entrepreneurial Development: Experience And Reflection

Assessment Criteria

In this era of digitalisation, the business operation is getting more and more complicated. Along with the complexity of internal business operation, the business planning and process execution are requiring more specific and specialised tools (Johansson?Sköldberg, Woodilla & Çetinkaya, 2013). Therefore, to become a successful entrepreneur and to design a business process holistically, several multipurpose planning and development tools are required.  In entrepreneurial development innovation is the most essential criteria that requires specific planning, execution and evaluation methods. Design thinking is a creative problem solving approach that minimizes all the possible planning errors in the pre-development planning phase. Apart from that, design thinking allows a business process to find out the solutions for any run time or potential issue. all the groups participated and had done well and also got good feedback Finally, we gathered different visualising ideas among all the friends.

This report will describe my experience in previous learning activities and all after event evaluations. In order to do so, the report will initially describe my experience and the components that I have learnt from the learning activities. In the next phase I will be analysing the components that I have learn while discussing about the specific skills and new things about entrepreneurship and innovativeness. After that, I will evaluate my experience conserving my feelings and thoughts on these factors and my skill set while making decision for my skill development plan to become a successful entrepreneur with innovative ideas. The purpose of this learning reflection is to reflect my experience and share my analysis and evaluation procedure in order to develop appropriate skill development plan for me. In Week 5We had discussed about the benefits of brainstorming and learned about the advantages of group works which help to generate different innovative ideas and help to take it in the market easily.

In this description section my experience in the learning activities on DT or Design Thinking process will be discussed. To do so, this section is subdivided into two sections namely description of experience and the learning outcomes from the experience.  

The process of learning about innovation, entrepreneurship and design thinking was 10 weeks long. Throughout the process, many units of team members were involved. The cooperation that I received from the group members is very encouraging and the topics are also Interesting.  In all classes, the professor used to introduce the units assessment, teaching team, learning resources, moodle and reading materials. In all the classes my classmates have shared their ideas and concepts related to the entrepreneurship, innovation, diffusion, and design thinking. Along with that, the professor explained each and individual factors clearly including the poster design, blogging tips, process to get good marks while sharing some wonderful innovation ideas and stories. These helped me to think and design my future in better way. Our professor allowed us to make multiple groups and discussed for the details requirement of assessments with some good examples.

Reading and Research Requirements for Masters Students

In every week, our professor had discussed on various topics, which were very interesting including problem solving, problem finding, spotting the obvious, and visualisation as a Design Thinking tool. In many classes, we students had discussed briefly on the explained topics with relevant examples among the group members. Along with that, our professor also had given different interesting examples on every topics and show us the related videos that helped us to understand the concepts and to find out the strategic implication of  problem solving tools as well.  Each group had individual leader. In the class of visualisation our professor gave a piece of papers to each groups in which we had to draw an imaginary picture of any person and should answered all the mentioned questions within the groups by visualising.

Throughout the learning process, we have conducted many activities in order to understand and utilise our unit materials while investigating the existing and potential discrepancies in our conceptualisation.  We had filled up and completed the given tasks and representing our groups when they went for the presentation. In week 8, our professor provided different equipments, which were needed to understand the process and importance of prototype.  For this, we had done prototype of hostel and buildings and demonstrated it in class well with better explanation. The main aim of week 9 was participating in the group discussion about the previous and upcoming assessments with all the group members while giving feedback about the prototype, which we had done in last week. The 9^th week was very much interesting for me, as we got good opportunity to ask many questions to the next group and got chance to know the suggestions and thoughts regarding the problems and prototype that we had done in last week. In weak 9 We had explained about the apps which was named as Hostel App to our professor also and got some knowledge from our professor regarding the structure of the App and we also modified it too in better way. For every part of the learning process felt very happy because I saw many new things to know and learn with my friends.

In entrepreneurial development innovation is the most essential criteria that requires specific planning, execution and evaluation methods. Design thinking is a creative problem solving approach that minimizes all the possible planning errors in the pre-development planning phase. Apart from that, design thinking allows a business process to find out the solutions for any run time or potential issue. Design Thinking has several components to build a proper structure for successful execution namely Mind mapping, Brainstorming, Visualisation, Feedback capture grid, Storytelling, Customer co-creation, Value chain analysis, Customer journey mapping, Prototyping and Concept development

Tools for Successful Entrepreneurship in the Digital Era

Mind mapping

Mind mapping is a highly effective process to getting information flow in brain with creative and logical understanding and conceptualisation. In Mind map tool, all the connected components, concepts, theories, dependencies are presented in a multi order tree format that consists of different nodes, relationship chains and one core topic or core concept (Aarikka-Stenroos & Jaakkola, 2012). The Mind mapping tool can be used to develop new business plan, analyse interrelation of various components, visualise concept presentation and to develop new ideas. Some practical implementations of the mind mapping tool are academic presentation, city planning concept, topic exploration and others.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a combination of relaxed and informal approach of lateral thinking for problem solving. Brainstorming allows the people to come up with new ideas and concepts within a group discussion to find out the appropriate solution of a problem through critically analysing and decomposing the proposed procedure (Zahra & Nambisan, 2012). It is a procedure that combines two essential components namely, group behaviour and rationally structured analysis. After developing the array of creative solution, the participants of brain storming session eliminates all the ineffective alternative ideas to find the correct one. The core concerns of this technique are to be open-minded and to have critical reasoning capability.    

Visualisation

Design Thinking is a building up approach of innovation which requires knowledge, innovation, concept designing and presentation before developing the implementation plan. Visualisation is a most effective component of this approach that allows the problem solver to present his or her planning and interpretation. Many implementation tools are used for visualisation procedure including presentation, poster, animation, graphical presentation, 3d animation and others. Visualisation also helps to gain the attention of the audience while making them more engage in the problem solving or process development procedure.

Feedback capture grid

Feedback capture grid is a feedback collection and evaluation tool that allows a system to analyse the feedbacks and critical responses of the users in order to eliminate the faulty issues and to find new opportunities for further improvement. In an organisation, feedback capture grid is used both internal and external operation to collect information about runtime errors and reviews of the consumers (Tschimmel, 2012). The feedback capture grid has 4 interconnected blocks namely Positive feedback, Negative Feedback, Points not clear and Improvement opportunity.

Table 1: Feedback Capture Grid

Source: (Created by author)

Story telling

Sorry telling is a procedure of presenting new ideas and concepts to the target audience in attractive way with practical interconnection and comprehensiveness. Story telling allows the speaker to develop strong verbal communication to influence, motivate and even convince the target audiences (Seidel & Fixson, 2013). In leadership to consumer relationship management, storytelling is used as one of the most effective tools of effective communication and design thinking.

Experience in Learning Activities

Customer co-creation

Business strategy is focused on customer expectations, experience and interactive relationships. With the help of Customer Co-creation a business can allows their customers to get more active and involved in service and product development in order to creat rich experience for themselves (Liedtka 2015). The co-creation strategy is very useful in understanding the customers perspectives with regards to their decision making process for purchasing. Hearing about customer expectations and opinions can change the perception of the business plan developers that also influences the design thinking process significantly.  

Value chain analysis

Value chain analysis (VCA) is a process that allow anyone to analyse the internal operations and competence level of an organisation that icludes primary and support activities that add value to the final products and services. The VCA also allows the organisation to assess their activities while reducing operational cost to increase profit margin and increase differentiation (Liedtka, 2014).

Customer journey mapping

A customer journey map is a diagram or a group of interconnected diagrams that explains the stages customer experience form the interacting phase, through decision making to buying products. The post-purchasing consumer experience and relation with the company are also included in this journey map. It allows an organisation to analyse their product, service and process quality through the perspective of a customer.

Prototyping

A prototype is an early development of  product which has not been released yet. Prototyping allows testing the product quality and potentiality before releasing the product for the market. From this sample, model the company can learn about the faults and opportunity for improvement that help to improve the overall configuration of the final product. The prototyping strategy is used in a variety of business industries including semantics, design, electronics, and software programming.

Concept development

Concept development emphasises the basic understanding of the necessary components, conceptualisation of the interrelation of these components and the overall operating process. Concept development is an extremely early stage of planning after idea generation and screening, where the development group needs to develop the basic skeleton or structural foundation of a particular new products or service. Concept development is very crucial for communication, presentation and initiation of the next phase of development (Vasileiadis, 2017).

The Week 1 helps me to gather my knowledge about entrepreneurship and the role of innovation. I am determined to make strides myself to think in a way which is able not only facing the issues and the problems but also find an inventive approach to do. With the group discussion among friends and professor, I am capable to design the future and how to prepare weekly Blog. I decided to attend all the classes of this units carefully and gain many ideas which helps me to design my life in a systematic way. I have learned many things within 10 weeks this unit which helped me to express my ideas without any hesitation with my classmates. In week 2, I have learned different tools of design thinking process and they are understand, observe, define, ideate, prototype and test. In the 3rd week, I learned many important things about the blog and blogging. I realised that the blog is the personal diary where I can post the activities which were conducted in the classroom by the professor by uploading through text ,photos and videos.

Components of Design Thinking

In week 2, I have learned to investigate how plan considering fits with more conventional shapes of the decision-making. In the week 2, I have learned some factors with detailed information about the difference between design and business in a practical way supported by appropriate examples. Along with this, I have learnt about the poster, which includes its meaning and presentation techniques. In week 5 I learned about rapid prototyping. From the lesson I have realised that rapid prototyping can be a bunch of strategies utilised to rapidly manufacture a scale show of a physical portion or get together utilizing three-dimensional computer supported plan (CAD) data. I have also learned about development and utilisation 3D printing as well as adding substance layer fabrication, with advance graphical designing technology.

Through the exercises, I have learned that intellect mapping for any theme to urge thoughts can make the estimation procedure in supply chain management and logistic planning simpler. Through the group exercises I have also learnt about mind mapping with it utilisation, operation and significance in business operations and in problem solving. I have learned in that, in data collection, two types of information collection strategies can be used namely primary and secondary data collection strategy. The Primary information collection strategy comprises survey overview and real time based studies and their outcomes. The secondary information collection strategy can be used for observation of studies and their outcomes, which had not been made by us. I have also learnt about data approximation and analysis techniques, which are used for micro and macro factor research in business planning.

The problem solving, problem finding, spotting the obvious, and visualisation will help to analyse the existing situation of any problematic environment and to find appropriate solution for those problems. These will be very helpful for my entrepreneurial skill development process and even in my professional implications. Discussion about previous and upcoming assessments will help me to enhance my comprehensiveness and competence level for academic scoring and career developing.  Strategic tools like Mind mapping, Brainstorming, Visualisation, Feedback capture grid, Storytelling, Customer co-creation, Value chain analysis, Customer journey mapping, Prototyping and Concept development will help me to improve my knowledge and develop my skills while allowing me to come up with new innovative ideas with appropriate implementation plan in my professional life as well.  

Along with all the Unit activities and learning components through the group activities I have gained the perception of cooperative and collaborative work procedure. It will help me to be a good leader and manager in my professional field as well. Apart from that the poster design, blogging tips will help me to make appropriate visualisation and presentation tool for my academic and professional field of implementation. The 3D designing, printing and graphical utilisation will allow me to develop my skill in visualisation, which is one of the most essential components for being an entrepreneur.

Reference

Aarikka-Stenroos, L., & Jaakkola, E. (2012). Value co-creation in knowledge intensive business services: A dyadic perspective on the joint problem solving process. Industrial marketing management, 41(1), 15-26.

Buzan, T. (2014). Mind Maps for Business: Using the ultimate thinking tool to revolutionise how you work. Pearson Education.

Hacklin, F., & Wallnöfer, M. (2012). The business model in the practice of strategic decision making: insights from a case study. Management Decision, 50(2), 166-188.

Johansson?Sköldberg, U., Woodilla, J., & Çetinkaya, M. (2013). Design thinking: past, present and possible futures. Creativity and innovation management, 22(2), 121-146.

Liedtka, J. (2014). Innovative ways companies are using design thinking. Strategy & Leadership, 42(2), 40-45.

Liedtka, J. (2015). Perspective: Linking design thinking with innovation outcomes through cognitive bias reduction. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 32(6), 925-938.

Seidel, V. P., & Fixson, S. K. (2013). Adopting design thinking in novice multidisciplinary teams: The application and limits of design methods and reflexive practices. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 30, 19-33.

Tschimmel, K. (2012). Design Thinking as an effective Toolkit for Innovation. In ISPIM Conference Proceedings (p. 1). The International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM).

Vasileiadis, G. (2017). Visualization of Service Design Concepts. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 12(3), 95-98.

Zahra, S. A., & Nambisan, S. (2012). Entrepreneurship and strategic thinking in business ecosystems. Business horizons, 55(3), 219-229.

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