Rahat’s Reflective Essay

As social entrepreneur, the decision to take a yearlong leave from work to pursue a second master’s degree, was a difficult one. I was aware that it meant leaving the close work with the Bangladeshi community and creating an impact on society to some extent behind.

In 2018, I decided to pursue my second master on Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship, with three main intentions.

Firstly, I wanted to improve my personal and professional skills and extend my experience. Studying this subject would provide me with tools and theoretical aspects of entrepreneurship and innovation. Secondly, I want to share my learnings and knowledge by mentoring and coaching others to lead them to success. Thirdly, my goal is to give university lectures, as innovation and entrepreneurship as a subject is very new in Bangladesh and universities are just starting to tread on this pathway. I believe my educational background and experience will provide me well to teach.

No matter if we are working for a startup or a company, there are some attributes of the entrepreneurial journey that follow more or less a similar process.

This reflective essay summarizes my learnings throughout the design thinking module from day 1 to the last day of the class, providing me with theorical and practical knowledge ranging from ideation to product selling. I believe these learnings will be beneficial for my professional future, be it for my upcoming startup or a leading position within a company.

In the last 7 months, I have learnt essential business tools, could further develop myself and my skills, and picked up many insights regarding entrepreneurship.

This reflection shall also provide a reference for my future self. Whenever I would like to remember some of the learned tools or how to overcome challenges, this essay will serve as a self-teaching tool containing the insights I gained.

For the purpose of self-reflection and self-learning, I have divided my entrepreneurial journey in three categories:

1. Business Tools
2. Personal Growth &
3. Entrepreneurship

BUSINESS TOOLS

I acquired many important tools and techniques during my Design Thinking module. I believe I will be using these tools for future business, and this collection will make it easier for me to look them up and refresh my memory.

Empathy, Observation, Brainstorming and Prototype

Empathy is the ability to understand another’s feelings and thoughts, without having similar ones (Battarbee, Suri & Howard, 2020). By observing people, we can identify customers’ needs and gain insights.

This process is always conducted by interviewing the customer. After identifying the needs, it is essential to create a Point of View statement (d School, 2009), which is an actional problem statement. It helps to categorize all problems/needs. After selecting the problem, the team needs to brainstorm (IDEOU, 2020) about the possible innovative solution for these problems. The next step after this is prototyping, which creates a Minimum Viable Product (Aghnia & Larso, 2018) of the solution to test it with potential users and take the feedback into account to develop the product.

Design Thinking Process (Source: Interaction Design, 2020)

I have practiced this process with my team through the task of designing new shoes for our customers. We went interviewing extreme users and by empathizing and observing them, we developed a POV, which led to the shoe design for our potential customers.

Going through this process will be very helpful for my startup to develop creative products/services for the problem we want to solve.

Persona

The persona is a fictional depiction of the customer we want to serve. It gives us a deeper insight of customers (Schmidt, 2012). During our workshop, I learned how to develop a persona through interviews. By asking “why?” one gains an insight of the customers.

Before creating a solution, it is essential to form a customers’ persona and keep it near to the entry of the office door, to help the team visualize whom we are serving.

Reverse Design Thinking

Reverse design thinking is a method to understand a product or the solution to a problem leading to the final product.

For me, this technique is a perfect tool to look into innovation ideas and to help me gain a deep insight into products/services. As a team, we visited the design museum to practice reverse design thinking by trying to understand the exhibited innovative products and services.

This method will support me in never forgetting to go back to my “why” of my business and to create better ideas and solutions (Hagen, Bernard & Grube, 2016).

Lean Canvas

The Lean Canvas for Startups is derived from the Business Canva to suit startups better in their purpose. The Lean Canvas focusses on the problem and solution of the startup and helps to build ideas on it (Buchalcevová & Mysliveček, 2016). It is very effective for startups to collect ideas on the canvas, saving the time of writing a business plan. Personally, I used the Lean Canvas with one of our team ideas, a notebook for students helping to enhance time management.

Utilizing the Lean Canvas for idea generation among my colleagues and teams will be an effective way envision ideas in one place.

Branding

Our journey from the KU trade fair to the Eden Market Fair improved my branding skills quit a lot. Not only did we build an online presence on the social medias, we also created a brand presence for our booths and a video advert for our product.

Failing to connect with our brand presentation at the KU Trade Fair taught me a valuable lesson. I learned that building a strong brand needs to cover three elements to connect with customers, the emotional, physical and cognitive level (EPC).

Pitching

Effective pitching of an idea and/or business not only shows the determination of the core team, but also the team’s performance and their persistence regarding the idea and success. Through this course, I have learnt to pitch more effectively and to adjust quickly under pressure or to unexpected circumstances.

During the Bright Ideas pitching we had to present our product as a service, and our team had only 10 minutes to change our pitch before the presentation started. That we were able to adept the pitch sufficiently on the spot showed that our team understood the essence of the product and was prepared to adept new ideas for the product.  

Regarding perfecting a pitch, I have learnt that pitching benefits from a script, but nevertheless has to stay flexible. Practicing many hours together, has helped us to make our pitch look very natural, and we could perfect the timing of everyone’s pitching (in our case we divided our talking time according to our pitch). It is essential for the pitch to be told like a story (consistency from start to finish). An outstanding appearance and appropriate business demeanor during the pitch create a good impression among the judges, as well as having answers for possible questions at the Q&A session.

PERSONAL GROWTH

My firm belief is, that there is no limitation for self-development. As a learner, I always have been thirsty for new knowledge and the development of my skills. The design thinking module has not only helped me explore new skills and fill in a couple of blind spots regarding branding, team and time management and keeping the whole picture in mind, that I was not aware I have had.

Leadership

To be a leader, one must have to know how to follow first (Peters & Haslam, 2018). Even though we had appointed a Managing Director, from time to time we all took the lead towards success for the team, practicing our leadership skills. I have learnt that believing in the team and following their leadership often is beneficial to make a team more efficient.

Mindset of Growth

Over the course of the class, I always have set my mindset to growing and learning from others. Being an entrepreneur, I have to keep learning and developing my skills to lead my business further. As we developed card games, I started reading books and articles on the topic and sought advice whenever I was struggling.

Empathy

Empathy is an important skill for an entrepreneur. This skill can be taught through practicing empathic exercises. Being a design thinker and entrepreneur, empathy is essential to help me to lead my future startup’s team efficiently and encourage them to be innovative. I have cultured to use an empathy map, which helps to experience the way a user might experience a service or a product.  

In one lesson, I learned empathizing with a blind person by using the toilet being blind folded. It made me realize how difficult using a toilet for a blind person must be, and I immediately thought of possible improvements in the facility.

I am planning to use this empathy map to create empathy within my team, whenever we want to improve our products and services.

Asking for Help

An important lesson I learned was that asking for help makes overcoming obstacles easier. When we were stuck with the pricing and producing of our card game, we contacted our course alumni for help and we frequently took advice from experts and coaches from our module.

In my business, I am set on creating a culture of asking, where everyone feels encouraged to seek advice. And from now on, also I will be asking for help more often.

Feedback

Receiving feedback is another skill I have developed. Throughout the process, I have been receiving feedback from course leaders, coaches, colleagues and classmates.

I have found that different points of view regarding my product or my own development helps me to improve. Our business idea has been improving a lot through receiving feedback positively and working on the shortcomings pointed out on the product or idea.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Choosing a Team and Teamwork

Choosing a team or co-founders is one of the most important parts of every business. This I have experienced at the Surrey Workshop and during the “It’s Not Just a Game” work, where I have achieved success because of my team.

For the course, we all needed to put our personas online, so we could choose the matching partners/colleagues for our school business idea. Before choosing InnoX team, I looked into their personas because I wanted to have a balanced team with diverse members. I emphasized on the pros and cons of working with them. Then I asked myself the most important question: “Can I work with this person for next 8 months?” (Zwilling, 2017).

Overall, I would say I made the right choice for my business idea, reflecting our team’s success.

As our team has diverse cultural backgrounds and mindsets, we started from the very beginning to talk about teamwork. One of the most successful team factors is communication, and we strictly implemented clear communication and respectful behavior among the team.

I have been using this experience to be practice being a team player, taking the lead in the team when appropriate.

Contract of Business and Roles

For the future, I will ensure to set-up a contract for any kind of business deal or partnership. To have a clear vision and ownership, I have learned that documentation is important, and it also clears up the roles and responsibilities of the owners.

This way, I will be able to avoid any future conflict and miscommunication. Furthermore, it is important to have a clear idea about the exit plan, to give the team more ease to operate.

Accounting

Business cannot be operated without a business account. As Young Enterprise, we have a business account to operate in the UK. All the transactions have been done through this bank account and we kept transparent accounting of the income and expenses with receipts. I have learned that account transparency helps to have a good grip of the financial condition of the business and what actions need to be taken.

Ideas and Product Development

When we discarded our first business idea, I learned that a solution should not be a creator of new problems. Having an emotional attachment toward an idea leads to emotional decisions for businesses.

During the product development, we kept updating and working on improvement suggestions we received from experts. I took away from this, that it is better to take the product on the market when it is ready for it, and that making improvements should be included in this process. Focusing on fine-tuning instead of probing the market made us loose the opportunity to sell our product at the Eden Market Fair.

Resources and Network

Our team was not my only resource for getting help, I have also used resources and connections for business development from my network. I used my connections to get professional designers for our card game and I have been growing my network in the UK, especially among the British Bangladeshi community. I intend on using this expert network to get support and mentorship also in the future.

Achievements

Among all the lessons and learnings, it is important to remember how hard work and team spirit pays off.

THE NEXT STEPS OF THE JOURNEY

The life on an entrepreneur is a constant journey of setbacks and subsequent growth.

These past seven months have taught me many lessons, about my strengths, but more importantly, about my shortcomings. 

I am aware that there is still much more to learn, but I know already now that in my next startup I will be conscious about my previous mistakes and shortcomings. This will help me to stay aware to not to make similar mistakes again.

Furthermore, I am set on practicing all the things that worked very well and lead my startup to success with teamwork and leadership.

Creating my own blogs and writing this reflective essay has actually been a very valuable lesson for me, as I had considered, but never dared, to have my own personal website and blogs. Now though, I feel confident to keep sharing my experiences online on a professional level, and work on my personal website and professional online presence.

One big achievement for me has been discovering the countless opportunities that lie in gamification. As gamification is becoming more popular now-a-days, I am working on establishing a consultancy agency for innovation development through gamification.

“It’s Not Just a Game” is just a beginning.

REFERENCES

Battarbee, K., Suri J.F. & Howard S.G., 2020. “Empathy on the Edge”. Available: https://5a5f89b8e10a225a44ac-ccbed124c38c4f7a3066210c073e7d55.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/files/pdfs/news/Empathy_on_the_Edge.pdf (Accessed: 19April, 2020)

Buchalcevová A. & Mysliveček T., 2016. Lean Startup and Lean Canvas Using for Innovative Product Development. Acta Informatica Pragensia, 5(1), pp.18–33.

Crandall, R. 2010. “Empathy Map”. Available: https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/3d994/Empathy_Map.html (Accessed: 19April, 2020)

D School, 2009. “POV Statement”. Available: https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/41a18/POV_Statements.html (Accessed: 19April, 2020)

Hagen, M., Bernard, A. & Grube, E., 2016. Do “It All Wrong! Using Reverse-Brainstorming to Generate Ideas, Improve Discussions, and Move Students to Action”. Management Teaching Review, 1(2), pp.85–90.

IDEOU, 2020. “Brainstorming – Rules & Techniques for Idea Generation”. Available: https://www.ideou.com/pages/brainstorming (Accessed: 19April 2020)

McKee A. 2016. “If You Can’t Empathize with Your Emloyees, You Better Learn To”. Available: https://hbr.org/2016/11/if-you-cant-empathize-with-your-employees-youd-better-learn-to (Accessed: 19April, 2020)

Mutiara Cahya Aghnia & Dwi Larso, 2018. “DEVELOPING NEW PRODUCT USING MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT”. Jurnal Aplikasi Manajemen, 16(2), pp.234–245.

Peters K. & Haslam A., 2018. “Research: To Be A Good Leader  Start by A Good Follower”. Available: https://hbr.org/2018/08/research-to-be-a-good-leader-start-by-being-a-good-follower

Schmidt, A., 2012. “The user experience: Persona guidance”. Library Journal, 137(16), p.19.

Zwilling, M. 2017. “7 Steps to Building the Team You Need to Start You”, Available: https://www.inc.com/martin-zwilling/7-steps-to-building-the-team-you-need-to-start-you.html (Accessed: 19April, 2020)

Team InnoX at Dragons’ Den

The Dragons’ Den purpose was to evaluate our business idea and give us feedback on market needs, the revenue model and to validate the idea. Another purpose was improving our pitching abilities and real life experience on investment pitching.

A perfect pitch needs team work, a lot of practice, and good visualization. As a team, pitching in various events had made us very confident. Nevertheless, it was time to update our pitch deck. Until then, we had been pitching using props to display our product, which made it difficult for the judges to visualize. On the other hand, this made our pitch clearer, and easier for the judges to focus on every aspect of the product, not being distracted.

A Glance into the Dragons’ Den: In December 2019 it was time to present our business idea and display our prototype once more. We would be given 6 mins for our pitch, with 5 topics to cover:

a) Business Pitch
b) Product/Service
c) Marketing
d) Finance
e) Sales and Branding
f) Goals & Future Plans

Mock Dragons’ Den: To prepare, we were going to pitch at a mock Dragons’ Den. As a visual presentation was required at the Dragons’ Den, we needed to reshuffle our whole pitching routine and include some topics usually not included. We were given 5 minutes to present our product, as well as a digital presentation showing our progress over the last 4 months and scout any investment interests.
We practiced our pitching, even recorded the pitch to monitor our body language, learn from our mistakes and to see where we needed to improve. The mock Dragons’ Den was a big learning point for us. Our judges gave us feedback regarding our finance model and asked to include some topics to make the presentation more professional.

Dragons’ Den: We had one week to fix our presentation, modify our pitch, practice and, the biggest commitment to fulfill, to get our final product ready for the presentation on the Dragons’ Den Pitch Day.
When we contacted our card printer, they notified us that it would be ready on Friday afternoon, shortly before our pitch appointment. We re-did our presenation slides and scripted our presentation again. As we were aware that there was a chance of not getting the product in time, we prepared with our unpackaged cards as plan B. Of course it came as a big relief to finally receive our cards just 30 mins before our presentation – quite the boost to the team spirit.

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New Presentation Slides

Our presentation went well and the judges were pleased to see our final product. We received the feedback that we were underpricing the card game. With all in account, we were quite satisfied with our presentation and the final product.

KU National Competition Selection: Among 8 teams, the judges selected 4 teams for the KU National Competition selection process. As one of the selected teams, we got 2 minutes to present the idea again and every team got 2 questions to answer. The judges were impressed with our pitch and our answers to their questions. Finally, Team InnoX and our fellow students Team A-Team, got selected to represent KU at the national competition.

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KU National Selection Pitch

Through the Dragons’ Den experience, I have learned that scripting the pitch, practicing it with the team, timing and the recording of the presentation are great ways to make a pitch better and more professional. During the pitch, I realized that a specific finance, pricing and selling strategy and a future vision play a vital role to attract investors to a product.

I like to thanks to InnoX team for sticking together during all ups and downs and I am grateful to our course leader, Janja Song for guiding us to every success and supporting us.

Team InnoX and Course Leader, Janja Song

Any recent pitch experiences? Share your ideas how you made your pitch more perfect!

Please leave your comment below. Leave a like if you like, and do share!

Meet Your Customers: Kingston Eden Walk Trade Fair

The Kingston Eden Walk Trade Fair offers a real-life experience for students to pitch and sell products to customers. This practice gives a better understanding on how to grab the attention of passersby and to sell a product to them. Before coming to our experience during the Kingston Eden Walk Trade Fair, I would like to point out some learning.

Incomplete Product: After the KU Trade Fair, we had been working on our product design trying to perfect it. Nevertheless, by spending a lot of effort on the design, we started loosing time for ordering our final product. The major challenge was to solve how to distinguish the four card decks of ‘It’s Not Just a Game’. As a team, we kept changing our opinion, and our card design did not go with our product impression. Hence, we went to redesign the whole card design, costing us a lot of time, resulting in not being able to receive the final product in time.

Branding: Learning from the first trade trade fair, we knew how much the brand matters to grab customers and that communication is key. This time we made customized props and presented the games benefits and our achievements to get the attention of our audience.

Trade Fair: The Trade Fair runs from 9am to 4pm. During this time we were given the goals to get attention, sell products and get pre-orders.

Placement: Before the Trade Fair, our team went to visit the area, to get a feeling of the location, considering also the weather conditions. Being a cold and windy day, we decided to set up our booth in a wind-still place and in close vicinity of Boots and M&S food entry, to ensure a good position to grab customers.

Approaching Customers: Utilizing the team of four, we decided that two members would stand at the booth and two of us would try to bring customers to the booth. We were asking passersby if they wanted to boost their creativity, but most of them refused our offer. At one point our course leader pointed out that our approach was wrong, so we modified it to “Come test your creativity!”. This approach started bringing customers to our booth.

Community Feedback: Some of our visitors were very enthuestic about our card game and shared their ideas. During the afternoon, we started meeting some interesting business people, who offered potential opportunities for B2B business. One person from NHS shared the need of a product like this in the health sector, a person from the banking sector shared his thoughts on contacting his HR department about this.

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Community Engagement

Missing an Opportunity: Even though our product was not ready for purchase, there were several customers approaching us to buy the card game. As it makes a bad image for businesses to sell an imcomplete product, we had to ask them to make a pre-order instead.
When we raised the concern about the missed opportunity, our course leader pointed out the one big dilemma we had fallen for: “Make the product perfect and forget everything else”.

Lessons learned: We should have focussed on production and building our brand, rather trying to re-make the product. I understand now that a product will always have an area where it needs to improve, and that 80% is more than 100%. Trying for 100% takes a lot of effort and time, often meaning a cost in opportunity. We missed out the opportunity to sell our product over fine- tuning, forgetting that selling the product would have meant achieving a better outcome.

What do you think about my experience being narrow-focused on product development? If you have similar experiences or a story to share please leave a comment and do not forget to give a like/share.

Bright Ideas 2020

Bright Ideas is an annual competition designed to give the students the opportunity to develop an idea, have it evaluated and win a prize of up to £1,000. There are 5 Categories, with two winners in every category: a) Winner (1000 GBP) & b) Runner-ups (250 GBP).

In our module, it is compulsory to attend the competition. The purpose of this competition is to develop an idea with your team, then pitch and present it. This excerise is supposed to give the students a real-life experience to pitch in front of experts and a larger audience. Bright Ideas has been divided in three steps:

a) Online Application (Judging Stage 1)
b) Sprint Weekend (Judging Stage 2)
c) Bright Idea Grand Final

a) Online Application: All the teams need to apply through an online application. The online judges go through the applications and 50% of ideas are deducted through this process. In 2020, 700+ ideas applied for the competition.
Throughout the process, my team and I started working on the pitch, the business idea and the revenue model. This application helped us to start working on the documentation of the development.

b) Sprint Weekend: All shortlisted applications are required to attend a 2-day Sprint Weekend workshop. The workshop is about how to develop an idea for the final stage. On the 2nd day, the teams have to pitch in front of the jury, who then decides on who will go to the finale. It also offers the opportunity to meet local experts, mentors and coaches. There were 150 teams who attended, and only 50 teams were chosen to be finalists.
Attending the sprint gave us several new view points regarding our product, among others a concern about our target customers. We got the recommendation to be more specific about our target customers.

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Bright Idea Sprint Weekend

c) Bright Ideas Grand Finale: In the end, ‘It’s Not Just a Game’ was selected as finalist for the Grand Finale of Bright Ideas. Coming from the IME module and having gained a lot of insights on design thinking, gave us an advantage regarding pitching, ideation and developing the idea at the Bright Ideas. Furthermore, as a team, we are very supportive to each other and know our strengths and weaknesses. Each of us always wrote our own part of the pitch, then made a combined script and practiced it. Our team always practiced 2-3 hours together for 2/3 days, to get our gestures, eye contact and movement aligned with our pitch. This gave us confidence regarding our pitching and the product.

A Card Game Turned into a Service: Some time before the Bright Ideas pitch, our Entrepreneurial Finance faculty asked all of our classes teams to pitch during the class. We recieved the feedback to think about how we could associate our card game with online services and consultancy, which changed our perspective on how we wanted to enter the market and where our potential lies.

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Waiting Room for Pitching

An Unexpected Event: 5 minutes before the Bright Ideas pitch, we suddenly realized that there has been a systemic error! We had ended up in the service category, even tough we applied to the product category – as we had always been pitching as a product and not as a service. So we certainly were not prepared to pitch as a service, nor did we have the right pitch ready. With great nervousness among the team, we changed the pitch from a product to a service pitch last minute.

Pitching: Coming back to the earlier feedback, we pitched our product as a service with the focus on how online services and consultancies could be provided with the product. The feedback from the judges was really positive and they recognized that there is a need of creativity boosting games and services in the B2B market.

Award Ceremony: ‘It’s Not Just a Game’ was awarded as runner-up in the service category and our team won 250 GBP as prize money. It was a truly joyous moment for the InnoX team.

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Award Ceremony of Bright Idea

Bright Ideas taught us more about team work, how to adopt to unexpected changes and how to motivate each other and move towards a common goal.

The startup experience is full of unexpected moments – which makes the journey very exciting.

Did you ever experience a last minute change during a pitch or comepitition? Please share your last minute changes with the audience!

Please do not forget leave a comment and like the blog. It would be great to know if me sharing my experiences and learnings are beneficial to you!

Branding and Communication

This blog is about our branding and how we changed it throughout the module. It is fascinating to see how our branding has developed and how we communicated with our audience.

Our first time presenting our product and the presentation of our booth was unorganized. The branding and product tone did not have any connection and our dress code could have been more colorful (We were all dressed in black). Our branding and communication has been changing with the product design.

BRANDING

Building a brand requires some key elements:

• Visual brand identity – everything consumers can see
• Brand tone of voice – personality expressed through written words (what, how, where, when)
• Brand personality – set of human characteristics found in a brand
• Brand strapline / tagline – short statement of what values the brand stands for
• Sensory branding – appealing to all senses; creating experiences

Ads:

Building a video ad for our product was an interesting learning point. The video was part of a classroom competition, with the most voted on ads recieving an oscar. The whole point of the ad was to learn how we can portrait our product to customers, how to communicate with an audience and how to guide the customer to a selling page.

Our task was to connect with our customer on an emotional, physical and cognitive level (EPC):

• Emotional: Showing why the product is fun, relaxing or clever – We needed to think about the personality of our company.
• Physical: Showing how our product works.
• Cognitive: Showing why it makes sense to buy or use it.

How to do it:
1) Write a script, distribute roles and responsibilities (who will play, who will record it)
2) Gather all the materials and props and find a location
3) Post editing of video

Emotional & Physical: It was a fun experience to record the ‘how to play’ the game. We tried to show the “emotional” & “physical” element in the ad. Shooting the ad in one take took a lot of patience. Light measurements, background and noice played a major role. In the video we explained how to play the card game, while showing how much fun it is to play.

Cognitive: This part is how the ad should lead the audience to the selling page. At the end of the video we added our facebook and instagram page address.

Oscar Day:

All teams presented their ads to the class and gave feedback and votes to each other for the respective ads.

It’s Not Just a Game Ads

Regarding our emotion elements, we received the feedback that we had not been able to explain what the game solved or why the audience needed to buy the product. Furthermore, the selling details in the video where displayed too short.

Taking the feedback into account, our brand went through quite a lot of changes. We updated our social media posts and upgraded our brand to connect with our audience.

Phase 1 – KU Trade Fair:

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At the KU Trade Fair, we did not have a brand presence and our booth gave a wrong impression.

Phase 2 – Eden Market Trade Fair:

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Eden Market Trade Fair

Here, we had a better brand presence and we also had changed our packaging and the layout of the cards.

Phase 3 – Dragon Den Final:

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  We wore clothes matching our card game

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Dragons Den’s Final

Throughout the experience, I have learned that while creating a brand there needs to be physical, emotion and cognitive elements covered, and missing one element creates misunderstanding or a different image of the product.

If you encountered similar experiences or if you face any challenges regarding this, please share with me and… do not forget to leave a comment and like the blog!

It’s Not Just a Game

In my previous blog, I have asked your guess on which idea we ended up choosing for our design thinking module. The question was if we would choose an idea from the three ideas I mentioned before,

a) Personalized notepad for students,
b) A multi-purpose backpack, and
c) A board game

or if we came up with a completely new idea to work with.

If your answer was that we would come up with a completely new idea, you were right.
As a team, we were struggling with which idea we should work on and what would be good for us. We kept brainstorming about ideas, going through several steps to come up with a new idea.

Ask for Help: Asking for help when we are struggling with something is not practiced as often as we probably should, as sometimes we think it is our inability to not be able to solve it ourselves. When we were stuck with our idea, our go to person was our course module leader. As she has been mentoring these modules for more than 11 years, she knows where students will face problems. At first, we hesitated if we should go there at an early stage, but then we decided to go to her for help.

Inspiration: During our meeting with our course leader, she helped our thinking process along by showing us some previous ideas. We discussed about which problems we perceived having market needs and how to offer innovative solutions. As a team we were most interested in board and card games and how playing can be a creative way to solve a problem.

Brainstorm: Inspired by the idea of creating a card game, we started brainstorming about use cases. One problem coming to our mind was how a team or person can be supported in being innovative, through simple brain exercises, as we realized that being innovative was a challenge also for our classmates and other students.

Identifying the Need: We started interviewing within our university, and confirmed that most expressed a struggle to come up with business ideas. Many also welcomed the idea of having some sort of tools to use for brainstorming.

A Card Game: The first idea was to produce a quick exercise for being creative. We choose to make 3 different card categories, one card category for environment, one for persona and one category for time constraint. Nevertheless, this did not seem very difficult and there was no twist for the user, so we added a forth category for word.

It’s Not Just a Game: “It’s Not Just a Game” is a combination of words, environments, personas and time constraints. Players choose a card from each deck and must come up with a business idea inspired by the card combination within one minute, then pitch the idea within the given time constraint.

Product Development: At the day of our idea presentation, we had a prototype of 24 cards, with 6 cards for each deck. The judges were impressed by our idea and the cards. Their feedback nevertheless made us realize that we knew too little about card games and that we needed to learn more about the market.

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First Design of the Card Game

First, we decided on 100 cards for each deck, a total of 400 cards, then we decided to cut it down to 40 cards for each deck, in total 120 cards. Through personal contacts in our home countries we found a designing team for the game, who built our first prototype design.

KU Trade Fair:

In January, we had to showcase our product at the Kingston University Business School Trade Fair. This was a big step for our team and the card game, as we got to test it on a real audience. We were excited but also nervous. At the KU Trade Fair, there were 3 judges to evaluate the presented products in 3 categories: Best Product, Best Brand and Best Team.

We received very positive feedback from the audience, they were coming up with ideas within 1 minute in general and they were excited to play the game. The purpose of the game, to play and exercise your creativity without any limitations, was well received. The expert feedback on card games and the correlation between card games and colour combinations made us realize that we needed to update the product before going for the final production.

Best Product Award: The biggest inspiration for me was when our card game was awarded with the Best Product Award. This was the starting point of our product development journey.

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Best Product Award

No Brand: Overall, we got a very important feedback regarding our stand, and how there was no brand presence and a lack of communication between product and brand. This made us realize that we had been so caught up in our product, that we did not think about the branding for our booth.

My overall lesson is that you should not shy away from asking for help and bring the team into the innovation process, so that you get more input and point of views.

From then on, things got more exciting with many ups and downs following suit. My next blog is about Branding and Communication.

Please do not forget to leave a comment and a like.

Business Plan under 20 minutes: Lean Model Canvas for Startups

The Business Model Canvas became famous with tech giants to come up with new business plans or reinventing their products. The Business Model Canvas — opposed to the traditional, intricate business plan — helps organizations conduct structured, tangible, and strategic conversations around new businesses or existing ones. It was introduced by Alex Osterwalder who mentioned this model in the book Business Model Generation. The Business Model Canvas is mainly used when a business is up and running and already has a base of consumers.

 The Lean Canvas, however, is a 1-page business plan template created by Ash Maurya, inspired by the Business Model Canvas and modified for lean startups.

My personal favorite is the Lean Canvas as it is focused on customers, problem and solution.

If you read my previous blog, you already know that my Design Thinking class team and I had killed our business idea, due to rather not manageable problems, and we had gotten a week to come up with a new idea to pitch. To do so, we were asked to come up with three ideas and apply our ideas to a Lean Canvas.

The three ideas we had:

1. Personalized notepad for students
2. A multi-purpose backpack
3. A board game

Application of Lean Canvas:

We applied the idea of the Personalized notepad for students to the Lean Model Canvas.

The notepad for students was supposed to combine a yearly routine of a student’s specific course with separate sections for each module to take notes, so students have a good structure of their notes and enough space for a yearlong plan to they keep up with classes, assignments and others.  An overall helper to manage student life.

Problem (What is the problem?): Time management, organizing all courses, managing diverse information

Customers (For whom are you solving the problem?): The more specific one can be here, the better the outcome will focus on the group. We chose university students of Kingston University as early adaptor.

Solution (How are you solving the problem?): Pre-structured information and year planner notebook

Channels (List of distribution channel. How will you reach to your consumers?): University library, online, social media

Revenue Streams (How will you earn money?): Direct selling to students, bulk sales to university libraries, students unions, customized fees

Cost (Direct and indirect cost affiliated with business.): Salary, distribution costs, printing etc.

Key Metrics (Measure the number of customers or market size.): 19,000 students in Kingston University

Unique Value Proposition (A single, clear statement or promise to get the attention of customers): Organize your student life in one notebook.

High Level Concept (Making UVP memorable for customers.): Google map for student life.

Unfair Advantage (What is the competitive advantage of the product.): Design your own notebook cover.

As we are acting as a startup and trying to enter into an existing market, we were using the Lean Model Canvas to get a better overview of our business idea and how we could develop further. The benefits of the Lean Model Canvas are that it is actionable and easily explainable to others.

By focusing on the aforementioned areas of the Lean Model Canvas and of course do a more detailed analysis of each segment, you will get a better idea of your business idea. Plus it is really fun to exercise with a team, integrating diverse POVs into the canvas.

So, as you may remember from my previous blog that we had killed our idea of a navigating hat for the blind.

Integrating all information you have, can you guess which idea we chose from the three mentioned above?  Or do you think we killed all of them and came up with something completely different for our startup?

Comment below and find out the answer in my next blog.

To Learn more:

1. https://hbr.org/2013/05/a-better-way-to-think-about-yo
2. https://leanstack.com/leancanvas
3. https://blog.leanstack.com/what-is-the-right-fill-order-for-a-lean-canvas-f8071d0c6c8c

“Kill the baby aka Kill the idea”

The word “Baby” has become one of very common use in the startup community. Founders are often found to be emotionally attached to their solution or idea, treating their startup nearly like a baby of theirs.

It can be observed that they get intensely defensive when someone gives them critical feedback, obviously disliking that they receive critique. This obsession with their idea costs them dearly later, when they have to face that there is no turning back from the loss or difficulty of situation.

Personally, I have learned this lesson in a very hard way during my own startup journey. I will share my personal startup and current journey soon. I hope it will serve you as a lesson to learn from my own mistakes, as I count them as one of the greatest lessons of my life. No MBA or Business School can teach you what you will learn while you are doing your own business.

As a part of my Design Thinking learning journey, my class teammates (InnoX) had the task to redesign an idea or come up with new solution to a problem. This time of rapid technological development seemingly offers solutions to all our problems; and we tend to come up with tech solutions for everything. Naturally, I am not making a stand against tech solutions, more accurately, after 2018, I consider tech a part and medium of any solution (it may you have a different view point on this, and I would be happy to discuss it).

Coming back to our class assignment, our team was not different; tech solutions were dominating our thoughts and approach. We wanted to look into a navigation solution for the blind.

Problem:

How can we improve the navigation public spaces for the blind, based on research that the blind have higher likeliness to suffer from mental illnesses like depression and stress as they tend to stay at home.

Having made the recent toilet experience (please read my post regarding the empathy map on this) were we tried to empathize with a blind person through navigating blindfolded inside and outside.

Solution:

By creating a hat having small cameras on the rim to create 360 degree view, we planned to be able to inform the user about any obstacles nearby. Through an attached headphone the user would receive voice commands on how to navigate around the obstacle. A connected mobile application would combine the voice command with Google maps to navigate their path.

Act as if you are using the product or service:

In the classroom, we presented an act to show our product. The first act was including a presentation how a blind person is using a stick to move from one side of the classroom to another. Four of us acted as bystanders, creating obstacles. The second act revolved around showcasing how the hat would serve to navigate the blind person to move around obstacles.

The moment of truth:

After a seemingly successful and convincing presentation, the first feedback on our product was a quite earth shattering one: “You need to kill the baby!”

Our peers’ feedback included with naming already existing solutions, but also that we would need improve the solution itself.

A smashing feedback, which made us conclude to better leave our formerly so convincing idea behind.

Not only the human factors, e.g. that the blind depend on sound and adding to that with voice command might cause confusion, also technological factors such as a by far not developed enough AI component to recognize obstacles, as we had imagined.

In conclusion, it was our course instructor that gave us a piece of advice that I will forever keep it in my heart and brain – sound advice for all innovators, as I believe: “Do not create a solution that create more problems.”

Hence, even though we might believe to have found the one thing, the best solution, the one of a kind, it is important to be ready to kill the idea/baby in order to prevent failure.

A Toilet Experience through Empathy

As a Design Thinker, it is important for us to experience the service/product if we want to redesign the service/product, as it is important to understand the service/product by taking interviews with possible users (not survey!) and observe the user behavior.

One of the biggest traits of a Design Thinker must be the empathy with the user, as without empathy the information available between the lines while interviewing users is lost.

In this blog, I am going to share my insights about empathy and how to use a method called the empathy map to understand a service from different angels while empathizing with users.

“Empathy—the ability to read and understand other’s emotions, needs, and thoughts—is one of the core competencies of emotional intelligence and a critical leadership skill.”

The empathy map is a tool developed by IDEO to put all observations into place to make it easier to empathize with users (read more

To learn how to use the empathy map, our course instructor gave us a task first, which I believe helped a lot to understand the method of the empathy map.

The Blind, The Robot and The Mute:

As per instructions, we formed a team of three where each member had to take on a specific role. One member had to act as if blind, one should enact a robot only operating on orders to perform specific tasks and one person had to act mute.

In a specific instruction we found that only the blind could give orders to the robot, and there was no way of communication between the blind person and mute person.

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Now the task to our team was the following: Navigate from the classroom to the tailed, use the toilet and navigate back to the classroom.

Afterward we had to fill in the empathy map with our experience, trying to create an empathy map for this user group.

An unforgotten public toilet experience:

As a Design Thinker, I love to experience intense and extreme situations, so I volunteered straight ahead to take the blindfold and act as the blind person.

Being blindfolded, my experience started with asking for help, my intention being to use all resources available. So I asked the robot to guide me to the toilet.

Even though in my mind I knew the robot would reliably guide me to the toilet, trusting was quite difficult. I had the continuous feeling to get hit by a door or wall or to fall on the floor. My walking pace became slow and I kept asking the robot if there were any obstacles nearby. Secondly, I kept asking about the whereabouts of the mute person.

When we finally reached the bathroom, I encountered not knowing how the door opened, and I realized that even getting into the toilet was a lot of hassle, not knowing the exact outlay.

It was weird to explore my surroundings by touching everything, even though I realize how much easier it was through the help of the robot, helping me finding the basin, hand dryer and guiding me on the way back.

It made me think about the future possibilities of AI: Do you think that AI or a robot could improve the experience for a blind person in their daily life?

Translating Experience into Empathy Map:

When we all had returned to the class, we started filling our feelings and experiences into the empathy map.

There are 6 questions to reflect in the empathy map:

1. WHO are we empathizing with?: in our case it was a blind person and a mute.
2. What do you need to DO?
3. What do they SEE?
4. What do they SAY?
5. What do they DO?
6. What do they HEAR?
7. What do they THINK and FEEL? (including Pain and Gain)

With our experiences combined there were several issues that we empathized with:

1. Blind: Being a blind person made us think about getting hurt and it is difficult to ask for help. We experienced uncertainty, fear and felt vulnerable. Depending on hearing and touching only, we realized that the toilet was noisy, and the sounds of the doors affected us.
2. Robot: Couldn’t communicate and waiting for every instruction to take an action. Even though they can see someone needs help, they had to wait for orders.
3. Mute: Couldn’t communicate with the Robot and the Blind, but can help to guide the blind person. They felt frustrated to not be able to communicate with the others.

If we want our public toiled to be friendly for blind person and mute person, what do you recommended the possible solution? I think AI system could play a major role to change the public toilet experience for blind or mute person.

To Learn More:

1. https://hbr.org/2016/11/if-you-cant-empathize-with-your-employees-youd-better-learn-to
2. https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/3d994/Empathy_Map.html

E.O.B.P (Empathy, Observation, Brainstorm and Prototype)

The fun thing about Design Thinking is, that if you know the process and act accordingly to it, things fall right into place.

Today, I will share with you a method called E.OB.P, a method that will help you to define a problem and with a process to support you coming with a possible solution and a prototype.

After forming our team of four in our Design Thinking course, we were given the task to define a problem we perceive, and to come up with a prototype. Our faculty gave us the theme “Shoe”. It was our first team work together, which is the time to engage all team members. There are some useful exercises to make you understand the strengths of your team members and create a bond among the team.

During the session, I found some lessons really useful and I am sure, you will find them also useful every time you want to come up with new solutions or products.

Survey vs. Interview:

Whenever we want to find some answers, typically we create a questionnaire and ask people to fulfill the answers. Unfortunately, when people see questions, they tend to give the most obvious answers, hence resulting in a very generic outcome. This might lead to wrong conclusions, and the possibility to end up with a product nobody wants. To circumvent this problem, one is well advised to design an interview instead, which includes prepared questions of the “whys”  to dive deep into the users perspective. The more you ask “why”, the more interviewees give away their struggles and thoughts about a product or service or what they need.

Finding “Extreme Users”:

But whom to ask? Who is the ideal candidate for an interview?

You will need to find your “Extreme User”.

And how to know who is an extreme user?

Look for those not following the rooms obvious rules. To give you an example: Imagine you go to a party and everyone is wearing party shoes. Then you spot someone wearing Converse.  A perfect example of an extreme user.

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For our assignment, we hence started scanning the shoes of students and staff on the campus, approaching the ones with outstanding shoe wear.   

Empathy and Observation:

Whatever the question, it is important to empathize with interviewees. According to IDEOU, ‘The definition of empathy is the ability to be aware of, understanding of, and sensitive to another person’s feelings and thoughts without having had the same experience.’

While interviewing your defined extreme users, it is important to observe and empathize with them.  There are couple of rules while asking questions: 1. Do not ask what they want 2. Don’t give away your intention of the interview and 3. Keep asking “why” questions.

During our research time, we interviewed 10 users about shoes, among them one extreme user really got our attention.

1. She wants her shoes to represent her
2. She likes to differ from others
3. Her shoes show her control of the room

Another common observation we found:

1. Durability and weather friendly is important
2. They like to have different colored shoes to match with the clothes
3. Price plays a vital role in buying shoes
4. 60% prefer to wear it in the shop before buying it

Point of view (POV):

After interviewing, we created a Point of View. The Point of View is a method to create an actional problem statement. With our POV, we came to an idea on what to focus in our shoe design and final product.

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Brainstorming:

According to IDEOU, “Brainstorming is one of many methods of ideation—the process of coming up with new ideas—and it occurs during the divergent phase of the creative process. “ After the POV, our team started brainstorming about the solution itself.

We wanted to create shoes that represent Fempower and a strong personality. We came up with the idea for a shoe line that have power stones, that represent certain power, in the soles. Our target was to make the user feel empowered, and that they can achieve anything. We defined our target customers a female corporate employees.

Prototype:

Now it became time to develop our idea to a prototype. This meant producing a shoe to gain a feeling for our product. Most design thinking students or practitioners may agree, that giving your idea a physical form helps to visualize it better. together, we designed the form and based on the physical form, we updated the design, adding the concept of changeable stones to represent your authority and to fit with current moods.

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Test / Feedback:

The Design Thinking process does not end with the prototype, now it is time to get feedback from your targeted consumers, to get a feel about what they think about the Prototype, what they like and what they don’t like. The feedback process must be repeated until you get the product right.

For more learning:

1. https://www.designkit.org/methods/66
2. https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/wp-content/themes/dschool/method-cards/extreme-users.pdf
3. : https://5a5f89b8e10a225a44ac-ccbed124c38c4f7a3066210c073e7d55.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/files/pdfs/news/Empathy_on_the_Edge.pdf
4. https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/41a18/POV_Statements.html
5. https://www.ideou.com/pages/brainstorming
6. : https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process