Teaching Notes:Business Ideas

Teaching Notes:Business Ideas

These notes are designed to support trainers in the use of the SUPER training materials provided through the SUPER platform. They are not intended to be exhaustive, but to assist trainers in preparing sessions for students.

This material should be read by trainers in conjunction with the related fiche in the ‘Toolkit’ section of the SUPER platform.

Summary

Succeeding in a business world is difficult. When you have an idea, there is still a long journey a head of you. If you set out to build an ambitious startup, you have only 1 in 10 chance in succeeding. Fails are expensive and you are losing time and energy. There are two popular methodologies that have a potential to improve your odds of success. One is called The Lean Startup (LS) and was created with technology startups in mind. Second is Design Thinking (DT) with a background in product design. Both are focused on creation of new products or services. LS is more business focused and starts with problems of consumers. DT is more universal innovation approach, that can be used to solve problems.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the session, students will:

Understand the difference between Design Thinking and The Lean Startup.

Be able to describe key steps of both methodologies.

Understand the differences between LS and DT.

Will know the basic principles of both and will be able to apply them.

Suggested Approach

Slides 4 - 6 are self-explanatory and the underlying concepts are explained more in detail in the accompanying fish.

Detailed Design Thinking Process

Thoring & Müller, 2011

Slide 7 links the phases of DT to underlying modes of thinking. Divergent thinking means being open to possibilities, searching for options, creative. Convergent thinking is mode when we search for solutions, trying to narrow down options and decision making. It is important to understand, we can't be in both states of thinking simultaneously. We want to develop our ability to switch between them. This would help us to be better problem solvers. When we look on a group level, it is difficult when you have people in different modes. Part of the group might search for ideas, be creative, while the other is trying to focus, narrow down possibilities. This can create a conflict in the group. DT is structured process that helps groups in switching between the two thinking modes.

Slide 8 shows the highest level of abstraction. You can distill the basic principles of Design Thinking into Looking, Understanding and Making.

Slide 9 how does design thinking looks in practice.

Slide 10 description of lean manufacturing principles that inspired The Lean Startup.

Slide 11current developments and adaptation of lean principles to other environments.

Slide 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 are self-explanatory.

Product-market fit means the customer is willing to pay for the product.There is an economically viable way to acquire customers.The market is large enough for the business (Cooper & Vlaskovits, 2010).

The company creation phase is concerned with building a scalable business through a repeatable sales and marketing roadmap (Cooper & Vlaskovits, 2010).

In the company building phase, departments and business processes are defined to support scale (Blank, 2006).

• In early stages of the process, test and feedback of potential customers can be gathered with e.g. minimal landing pages, paper-prototypes, or early working prototypes, PPC.

In the customer validation phase it will be checked if customers are buying the product and the market is large enough for a viable business (Cooper & Vlaskovits, 2010).

• Goal is to find validation of a “product-market fit” and to answer the question if the developed product is something that people want (Maurya, 2012).

Slide 18 - 26 are self-explanatory

Ash Maurya - Running Lean

This book is a practical guide to lean startup principle implementation.

Related Seminar: Design Thinking & Lean Startup

This seminar is intended as a suggested activity before the related lecture material (Activity 1) and as a follow up session to it (Activity 2). There is also the related fiche in the ‘Toolkit’ section of the SUPER platform.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the session, students will be able:

• to fill out Lean Canvas
• understand the principles of Design Thinking
• be able to create a physical prototype

Activity 1: The Wallet Workshop

The Wallet workshop is a great exercise that introduces Design Thinking to anyone that never heard of it. Students experience the whole process in 90 minutes. They even build and test their prototypes. It is fun activity with lot of learning potential.

You can find detailed description and all the resources here.

Activity 2: The Lean Canvas

Let students to come up with ideas or you can use ideas from the previous session on opportunity recognition.

Let students fill the Lean Canvas individually. Guide them using this presentationhere.

Detailed description of the Lean Canvas

You can download the Canvas here.

After they fill the Canvas, let them work in groups to synthetize the findings.