Reflective Report On Design Thinking And Entrepreneurship

The Design Thinking Process

Question:

Discuss about the Pioneers in Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management.

A reflective report is a report which involves the use of personal experiences as a consideration when describing the context or meaning of a specific theme or topic. In the past semester in class I have been able to learn a lot in respect to myself, the coursework I engaged in and learnt while undertaking the class. Design thinking is the utilization of creative strategies while working or implementing a project to ensure that it something that is very innovative and will be of benefit to its users. Entrepreneurship is the process of identifying a need and designing a solution which will solve or fulfill the need and making the whole endeavor a business (Brush et al, 2003). In this paper I will be able to display my thought process management and how I perceived various experiences during the time we pursued this unit.

Design thinking is a way in which individuals can view issues or problems so that they are able to come up with very innovative ideas to resolve these issues (Brown, 2008). The design thinking process is a new way of helping individuals solve problems in a more efficient way. It can be used in various fields since problems span to all disciplines and the utilization of design thinking can help in resolving of these issues. In business, design thinking is used by professionals by matching the necessary and appropriate technology available to the needs of the people or their clients. In design thinking the business professional is tasked with fulfilling the needs of his or her clients while by coming up with a viable business strategy which can become a market opportunity and bring their clients value. Design thinking takes a practical approach by trying to come up with a creative way of solving problems (Beinecke, 2009). It is referred to as a solution based approach since the purpose of it is to provide or come up with a result which is constructive and beneficial. Design thinking is different compared to the scientific method of solving problems because it considers feedback of the sample population by incorporating their emotional state which the scientific method does not.

Critical self-analysis is the careful consideration of all facts given to an individual and analyzing them to come up with a feasible and viable solution.  Based on what we have been able to learn this semester my approach to various issues now incorporates a lot of critical self-analysis. As I approach any task I try to define what kind of solution can be obtained which is viable and feasible by use of the design thinking process. During my time this semester I embarked on solving a problem which I realized faced some of my fellow students. I was able to critically analyze the situation and discovered that there are a lot of people who are not able to get to their respective classes since there is not synced reminder or system which can ease their problem. I decided to embark on this journey in trying to solve this problem for my fellow classmates (Zhang & Cuete, 2015). Most of my classmates used to miss their lecturers because they simply had not set reminders on their devices. I had also fallen into this problem once in a while when I was overwhelmed with a lot of work. The tedious task of setting up reminders for every lecture an individual is supposed to attend in a day was very boring and most students simply did not do it. They missed classes a lot and this affected their academic performance. Some of my classmates had no idea that they had such a problem because they had become accustomed to managing by themselves using normal printed timetables. As I suggested my idea to them they were amazed that such a solution could be developed to solve a problem which they did not think they had in the first place. Design thinking was a process I used in trying to come up with a solution which would solve the problem in which my classmates were being faced with. Design thinking utilized a divergent thinking approach. This means that when you utilize design thinking in your operations you care able to identify and explore many possible solutions to a problem before identifying the best feasible and viable solution to solve the problem at hand (Brown & Wyatt, 2010). Convergent thinking is the simple process of narrowing down the different solutions achieved to identify a best fit solution to a need or problem.

Critical Self-analysis

Design thinking also uses the concept of building up ideas which have no limits during the brainstorming phase. When having a brainstorming session such as this it encourages the parties involved to be more open and participate in giving of ideas and reduces the fear of failure in the participants. Design thinking encourages out of the box thinking so that conventional solutions are not the only one which are considered (Visser, 2006). Here all spheres are considered to identify which is best places to solve a particular problem. The design thinking process has several stages which include defining the problem, researching on the problem, ideate which is to come up with all possible solutions until a final solution is achieved, prototyping which is building the solution which is agreed upon, implementing the solution and learning how the solution impacts users or how it is adopted by users (Cross, 2006). I was able to form a team which would help me in solving the problem I had identified. We researched on the problem, how people had been faced by it and what solutions they were currently using. We brainstormed for a while during the ideation process and discovered that since most students had smartphones we would be able to create a solution which would run on their devices. The application which was the solution would integrate with their normal calendars and pick up on their schedules. The prototype would be an application that would be able to run on the student’s mobile phones.

The prototyping phase was a very interesting and a distinguishing factor during the whole process. We had identified the problem and came up with a solution but none of us had the necessary skills needed to come up with the kind of application we needed (Ribson, 2002). We had decided on having an application that would pick up all the available lecturers that would occur every day. What the users would have to do is simply pick out the units they had undertaken for that particular semester and an organized timetable would sync to their application and mobile calendars. The users did very little work in setting up so they would not find it to be a tedious, boring or overwhelming task. We came to understand that though we had insights on how the technology would work the actual development would fall to real experts. We had to use our critical analysis skills to identify how the project would move forward. After analysis we decided to approach someone who used to put up fliers in campus about offering development services (Plattner, Meinel & Leifer, 2011). We talked to him and he was very happy to help with a condition that if we were not able to pay his fees he would need a few shares in the company. That was the first instance which hinted to me that what we were doing was a business rather than a simple problem solving task or hobby (Bryan, Tilcsik & Zhu, 2017). We had all gotten so into the actual problem solving process that we did not notice that we were giving birth to a business which might be viable. The prototype was soon after developed and we implemented it by giving it to a few students to test it out. The feedback we got was overwhelming. The system was tested for a month and within that time it had been adopted by over one thousand students within the campus.

The Stages of Entrepreneurship

We got to learn so much during the process and we also got offers to improve the system to accommodate other academic institutions. The period after coming up with our prototype we also embarked on setting up a business framework to manage the economic impact of the application would have. We had to take up the design thinking process in coming up with strategies which would enable us to effectively run and manage the business (Noel & Ita, 2016). We envisioned the application would bring value to our users and hope they would pay to use the services. We were very right in doing this. A month after the system was implemented the few resources we had come up with to develop and manage the system were becoming scarce. We had to capitalize on the opportunity by scaling our resources to accommodate more users. The model we came up with would allow users to get a thirty day trial of using the system to understand basically how it worked and why they would need it in their daily lives. After this period we charged a monthly subscription. The finances we would acquire would go in continually improving and updating our application to accommodate more users and give every user a worthwhile experience as they used it. We became entrepreneurs because we discovered a problem in which users faced and solved it while being able to make profit from the venture (Crainer & Des, 2000).

Entrepreneurship is a profession which is sometimes referred to as a calling based on feedback achieved from various industry experts. It entails being your own boss as you venture into solving a problem which is being faced by individuals (Scott & Ven katraman, 2000). In our case we were able to identify the problem which the students were facing and we came up with a solution which was feasible, viable and would apply to the students. It goes without question that if we did not utilize design thinking in our problem solving venture we would not have been able to achieve the results that we did. If we also had not achieved skills in critical analysis we would not have been able to identify the problems which the students faced and solved it for them. The behaviors of an entrepreneur involve being a very big risk taker (Yetisen, Volpatti, Coskun, Cho, Kamrani et al., 2015). Here we mean that the entrepreneur should be willing to sacrifice a job or financial security in the pursuit of an idea or a problem which they wish to solve. Entrepreneurship has a lot of uncertainty and therefore anyone venturing into it should have a high tolerance towards a lot of uncertainty and take risks. An entrepreneur should have the ability to learn very fast, be teachable and be able to take advice from others. Entrepreneurship involves an individual trying to solve a problem (Ramoglou, Tsang et al., 2016). The solution to a problem might be very different from what the entrepreneur initially envisions. The coaching, training and advice in which an entrepreneur achieves from other people helps them in ensuring that the product or solution in which they are going to deliver will actually impact its users in a positive way and they will be willing to pay for such a service or solution (Hisrich, 2011). The strategies in which an entrepreneur should use include continuous improvement. This is because for the entrepreneur and their business to remain relevant they need to adapt to changes that occur. The entrepreneur should also explore any new or unknown avenues to ensure they identify whether or not they can be able to leverage them in their operations.

The entrepreneur should utilize all the business intelligence available to them so that they may be able to come up with innovate solutions that are viable and feasible in the market (Dorst & Nigel, 2001). The entrepreneur should also be a good communicator. They should be able to communicate well in front of various individuals and audiences. The purpose of this is because the entrepreneur being the first person of contact in a business they should be able to explain the challenges they observed and how the solution they have come up with effectively solves that problem. This helps them sell their product or solution for it to be known to potential clients that such a solution exists. The utilization of word of mouth from one student to another is what enabled our application to become popular and widely known to other students. We however had to improve in our communication skills because there were people who wanted to establish why the solution was different from other kinds of solutions on the market. We also had to keep improving and innovating our solution (Dorst, 2012). The design of the application kept improving based on industry standards and the feedback we got from our clients. This enabled us to stand out in the market as the best solution provider for the problem in which the students faced. We continued learning and implementing advice we got to ensure that our business remained relevant.

From the experience I have achieved from learning on the concepts of critical analysis and design thinking in this course I have been able to improve in my problem solving skills. I have also learnt that when individuals venture into entrepreneurship they have simply identified a problem which they capitalize on (Landstorm, 2007). They solve the problem in which they have identified and if they have done their research well they have identified clients who will pay for they services or solution they are offering. As I embark on the next few months I plan and purpose to use the skills acquired in this unit to solve the following problems. Streamlining the course work deployment to students and the way in which students hand in their assignments. I have been able to observe that students are facing issues as they work on their assignments. Sometimes they need guidance and mentorship from the lecturers and other students to help them achieve and finish the given assignment. An online messaging system which can be accessed by all relevant stakeholders will go a long way in ensuring that the students are able to complete their assignments on time and gain good grades. I also plan to attend several workshops and seminars that will dwell on design thinking and entrepreneurship. I believe even though we have learnt a lot in this unit there is a lot more information to be acquired in the sector. By attending such workshops I can be able to hear from industry experts on how they utilize design thinking in their operations to always ensure they achieve the best and most appropriate solution to any problem they might face. The seminars and workshops will also give me exposure to other industry leading experts who can be able to evaluate the projects I have undertaken or wish to undertake for them to give insight on how they can be improved and scaled to serve more people and be more efficient in becoming a solution to the problem at hand (Katila, Eric, Chen & Henning, 2012). Attending such events and seminars will also improve my behavior by becoming more of a professional who can be able to endeavor in solving specific problems.  It will also grow my knowledge bank and maybe in a few years I can become an entrepreneur and solve more problems being faced by people.

References

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