Course content

New ways of production, distribution and creation for products and services has contributed to the need to revisit certain models of innovation in the field of design and entrepreneurship. This course aims to provide design students with the managerial, economic and strategic thinking knowledge, as well as design skills and motivation to encourage entrepreneurial success. Moreover, it teaches design students to think like an entrepreneurs and provides them the models, tools and frameworks to further develop their business or ideas. The main motivation for introducing this course is to raise students’ awareness of self employment as a career option and develop attitudes, behaviors and capacities at individual level to establish growth oriented ventures.

The course adopts an experimental approach to developing new patterns of production, distribution, as well as creating business ideas that are able to mix innovation design, business design, making and new manufacture. Guest lectures will take a central role in this course, not only with respect to knowledge transfer, but also as a platform to facilitate mentorship and role modeling to encourage young candidates to pursue their creative potential and build critical links with different actors.

Topics, which will be discussed in this course are;

• Different models of Entrepreneurship
• How to develop and package innovative products, services, interfaces, etc?
• How to create awareness of the economic and financial implications, which will be derived from an entrepreneurial approach
• What business and design methods and tools are suited to be applied in typical entrepreneurial contexts
• How to understand different forms of value creation and accordingly develop networks and partnerships to achieve a targeted value by focussing on long term benefits for society and economic growth.

Learning outcome

Knowledge:

The student

• Is able to understand how different forms of entrepreneurship can be traced back or related to typical business management and innovation theories
• Is able to understand how design methods and tools contribute to entrepreneurship thinking and attitudes

Skills:

The student

• Is able to (re)design their product, service or interface for marketability
• Is able to develop a persuasive marketing, distribution and production plan
• Is able to strategically develop collaborations with different actors to market and produce their offering(s)

General competencies:

The student

• Is able to recognise and capitalise on business opportunities, which are being presented by their previous designs or design intentions
• Is able to manage uncertainty

Learning methods and activities

The course is predominately project-based. It comprises of a series of lectures, complemented by tutoring sessions. The lectures aim to provide general overview of the different strategies, processes and methods for entrepreneurship, whereas tutoring sessions give the opportunity for students to interact and co-develop their project with respective faculty members and stakeholders.

Further on evaluation

In this project-based course, students will evaluated on the following criteria:

• Proposed project aim and plan
• Quality of the (re)designed and developed offering: Product, Service, Interface, etc.
• Overall Business Strategy , Distribution Plan, Production Plan, and Marketing Plan.

A re-sit exam will be held in the next semester.

Specific conditions

Recommended previous knowledge

The course is catered for students in the 4th year of the study program Industrial Design (MTDESIG), the 2-year master's program Industrial Design (MSDESIG) and the 2-year master's program Interaction Design (MIXD).

Required previous knowledge

TPD4144 Futures, or equivalent

Course materials

Recommended literature:

• Aaboen, L., Landström, H., & Sørheim, R. (2020). How do you become entrepreneurial in one week?. In How to Become an Entrepreneur in a Week. Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Drucker, P. (2014). Innovation and entrepreneurship. Routledge.
• Osterwalder, A., & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business model generation: a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers. John Wiley & Sons.
• Osterwalder, A., Pigneur, Y., Bernarda, G., & Smith, A. (2014). Value proposition design: How to create products and services customers want. John Wiley & Sons.
• Timmons, J. A., Spinelli, S., & Tan, Y. (2004). New venture creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21st century (Vol. 6). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.