Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Design Thinking, Startup Funding

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Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Design Thinking, Startup Funding

Innovation is important in entrepreneurship. Today innovation is everyone’s business. Whether you are a manager in a global corporation, an entrepreneur starting up, in a government role, everyone is expected to get lean – to do better with less. And that is why we all need design thinking. At every level in every kind of organization, design thinking provides the tools you need to become an innovative thinker and uncover creative opportunities that are there – you’re just not seeing them yet.
As Startups are typically born out of big, innovative, bright ideas. However, even the most luminous idea will quickly fade and die out if you fail to execute it properly. That’s why, at the core of every successful startup, there needs to be a sound, profitable business model.
This course is giving a deep look at how individuals and organizations use creativity and design thinking skills to identify and choose opportunities that enable innovation. Creative problem-solving skills are developed and enhanced through a range of real-world activities. An overview of design thinking tools is provided to help students understand design thinking as a problem-solving approach. Ideas developed through these processes are then applied to a customer discovery approach to understand their value in the marketplace.
Grasp the concept of innovation especially in technology space,
Apply Design thinking process to generate new human-centered innovative ideas/ solutions and validate them,
Turn those solutions into viable business solution.

You will Learn:

Innovation & Technology
Business Models Innovation
Design thinking
Entrepreneurship
Startup Ecosystem & Funding Cycles.

Course Outline

Innovation & Technology
Business Models Innovation
Design thinking
Entrepreneurship
Startup Ecosystem & Funding Cycles.

What is Innovation, Technological Innovation and Innovation Management?

Invention, Creativity and Innovation: What is the difference?
Why innovation is necessary? What causes innovation to fail?
Sources and types of innovation
Diffusion of innovation
Technology & Trends in a nut shell

What is Technology? What is Trends? The difference between them?

The Gartner Hype Cycle for emerging technologies: including introduction to its five key phases and how can it be used?
Modern technology trends with examples of startups adopt them:
Sensing and Mobility (IoT)
Artificial intelligence (AI)
Data Visualization and Analytics
Digital Transformation and Industry 4.0
S-curves and the best timing to introduce new products / service.
Team creation (Every team need three type of mindset: Techie Person – Designer – Business Person).

Introduction to Design Thinking Mindsets, and characteristics of good solutions

creative confidence
Problem selection and Opportunity Definition.
Presenting and practice a tool for problem selection

Convergent thinking techniques

How to define all personals related to the problem? and how you will select your user?
What kind of information (Facts and Insights) you need to find about your problem and your proposed user? How and where to conduct online research to develop full understanding of your problem and your proposed user?
Empathize Stage of Design Thinking
Introduction to Persona

Conducting User Research

How to conduct research to develop full understanding of the challenge that you are solving: Interviews, Observe and Online Search.
Focus on different ways and tools to do this (on line during COVID time) and present in some different sources of data and information online.
How to develop relevant questions, and hypotheses to answer them, and how to test the results.
How to conduct an interview (with REAL persona) and its stages? What is the expected output?
Empathy Map

Define Stage of Design Thinking

Reframed Problem Definition
POV statement template
Generation of How Might We question, Why? and How?

Ideation Stage of Design Thinking

Divergent Thinking: Ideation and Creativity Tools (3 tools – expected output at least 50 technology based ideas)
Convergent Thinking
Synthesis and Selection of the best idea,
Presenting of one of idea selection tools.
Idea description template

Prototyping Stage of Design Thinking

What does the word “prototype” mean?
What is the purpose of building a prototype?
What are different kinds and methods of building a prototype and when each of them is used?
Business Model Canvas

Testing and Refining Prototypes

Validation and Testing Stage of Design Thinking:
Plan to test (Test Planning template)
The concept of MVP?
How to test your idea using a landing page?

Entrepreneurship mindset and characteristic of successful entrepreneur

Difference between startup, Small Business.
Business Model Innovation.

Pitching:

Storytelling
How to create a pitch deck?
How to deliver a good pitching?
How to record your pitch in the form of storytelling using computer program like Zoom?

Startup Development and Financing Stages.

Introduction to Innovation Ecosystem in Egypt and how to benefit from it as startup.

What you will learn

Grasp the concept of innovation especially in technology space.
Apply Design thinking process to generate new human-centered innovative ideas/ solutions and validate them.
Turn those solutions into viable business solution
Distinguish the models of entrepreneurship and innovation for implementing trends in entrepreneurship in your business today.
A greater understanding of the tools that every innovative organization needs to succeed
Determine strategies and tools that entrepreneurs and startups use to develop and launch innovations.
Identify concepts of business model, design unique value propositions and distinguish principles of innovation.
Distinguish elements of a business model and value technology as a strategy to identify with the key audience.
How to deliver a good Pitch story to investors to raise funding.
Meet and discover the Startup Ecosystem in MENA region and how to raise funding.

Audience profile

This program is for teams and individuals who want to learn a proven, systematic approach to new product development. Anyone responsible for driving innovation, growth, and the customer experience should attend, including functional and cross-functional teams.
Roles of past participants include those from creative, design, customer experience, engineering, innovation, product, R&D, strategy, and UX, such as:

Product Manager, Marketing Manager, Growth Manager, R&D Manager, and Product Head
Senior Designer, UX Designer, Design Engineer, Creative Manager, UX Design Consultant, Art Director
C-Suite executives including CEO, COO, Managing Director, Founder, President, Chief Strategy Officer
Innovation and Growth Consultants