An interesting development in the entrepreneurial economy is the rise in both number and diversity of roles played by designers. Be it as consultants, contractors, educators, founders or funding decision-makers, design skills seem to be increasingly attractive to entrepreneurial teams, accelerator programs and venture capital. This exploratory study asks whether the practices, cognitive processes and mindsets prevalent in a formal design education help in the formation of entrepreneurial opportunities. Using a visual narrative approach, it compares the processes through which entrepreneurial opportunities were formed by 14 Chilean founders from design and non-design backgrounds, with the purpose of identifying how design thinking contributes to, hinders, or fails to support those processes. Findings suggest that collaborative work styles, thinking by doing and reflective reframing have the greatest positive impacts on opportunity formation, regardless of the disciplinary background of founders. Design thinking does not seem to provide a clear understanding of value creation and resource leveraging. The study finds parallels between design thinking and opportunity formation that can be drawn upon to improve development of entrepreneurial competencies among designers.
Stir was a crowd-voted grants platform aimed at supporting creative youth in the early stages of an entrepreneurial journey. Developed through an in-depth, collaborative design process, between 2015 and 2018 it received close to two hundred projects and distributed over fifty grants to emerging creatives and became one of the most impactful programs aimed at increasing entrepreneurial activity in Canberra, Australia. The following case study will provide an overview of the methodology and process used by the design team in conceiving and developing this platform, highlighting how the community’s interests and competencies were embedded in the project itself. The case provides insights for people leading collaborative design processes, with specific emphasis on some of the characteristics on programs targeting creative youth
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.