1.3 – Engaging in Design Thinking & Ideation
Design Thinking is a powerful exercise to understand, articulate, and test the customer problem and potential solutions. Design Thinking brings clarity to what product or service you should build, for whom, and why. This module familiarizes you with the elements of the step-by-step Design Thinking process.
This module will cover the following topics:
- Moving From Idea to Action
- Social Enterprise
- Following the Seven Step Design Thinking Process
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
- Identify the elements of social enterprise
- Articulate venture ideas using the Design Thinking process
Section A: Moving From Idea to Action
Motivations
Before getting too far into developing and testing a new idea, you should reaffirm your motivation, and that of your potential co-founders, in spending time on this new venture.
Pause
Returning back to module 1.1, The Start Up Roller Coaster, think about your team’s and your own motivation for moving forward with this idea.
- Are you passionate about the problem?
- Do you just want to make money?
- From Courtney Reum, Co-founder of M13: What does success look like? [1]
- Is it to provide a nice lifestyle or build a billion-dollar business?
There are no wrong answers, but it’s important to be honest and authentic about your answers so everyone has the same expectations going forward.
Other questions from Courtney Reum include:
- What makes you unique?
- Why you and your team?
- Why now as opposed to anytime in the past?
These questions will later inform both your sales and investment deck.
(See [Module 2.4 Presentations Pitches] for more info)
Building a New Venture Step-by-Step
This step-by-step process outlines the launch of a new venture. Depending on the idea, product/service, team and customer, this process can take anywhere from two months to nine months.
- Defining motivations and objectives of the new venture
- Ideation using Design Thinking – Covered in 1.3
- Develop customer profiles – Covered in Start 2.2
- Customer development interviews – Covered in module 2.3
- Business Model Canvas – Covered in Start 2.5
- Building the Minimal Viable Product – Covered in module 3.1
- Getting early users and customers – Covered in module 2.3
Incorporation
Incorporation represents an important step, but once formed a corporation takes a lot of work to maintain. You need to complete your business registration, file taxes and maintain accounting and legal records. Delaying incorporation works for two reasons:
- You don’t need a legal corporate entity to plan, validate, talk to potential customers, or put together a quick prototype to test things out.
- What if you try to validate the idea and it doesn’t fly? Now you’re stuck with a corporation to maintain, and for which you need to file taxes.
Optional Reading
Author, Guest. “Your VC Needs A Billion Dollar Exit. You Do Not.”
Section B: Social Enterprise – An Idea to Consider
What is a Social Enterprise?
A social en