This is the first part of a yearlong course on design and entrepreneurship. The goal of the course is to immerse all first-year students of the University, irrespective of major, into the world of design thinking, entrepreneurship and business management. For this semester’s work, the course will cover two main aspects: design thinking for problem solving and entrepreneurial opportunity analysis. The two areas will involve students undertaking exercises to help hone their skills in design thinking, conduct business opportunity identification and analysis culminating in business concepts. Students will then develop and validate their business concepts and present them for evaluation.

The first half of this semester will look at creativity, design thinking and innovation with the aim of positioning students to develop an innovative posture. Class sessions and activities will see students uncovering how the brain creates and prevents creativity, how to reframe problems, conduct research, conduct sensemaking to uncover insights from research, develop a point of view, ideate, prototype and develop solutions to the problems identified. The key focus areas are teaching them how to deal with ambiguity and be innovative and creative, in the midst of limitations and constraints. Students will also learn how to prototype and test their ideas with users. The second half of the semester will be structured to help students evaluate their design proposals and decide on how to take them further.

Building on the background from the design module, students will study business opportunity analysis and business model development as entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. They will run through the theories of business venture modelling to help them model their business concepts. This will serve as a basis for using tools like the business model canvas, which will require that students identify potential customer segments, develop and test value propositions that address their pain points, problems or needs they discovered in the first part of the course. At the end of the semester, students will reflect on the course, as well as present their business concepts for evaluation and selection for the business simulation project in the second semester.