AVITA INNOVATION, BRANDING AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP MODEL

- A TUTORIAL

The AVITAE TEAM 2015

2015

Notice

All the pictures, text and more are produced by the AVITAE-team.

The team cannot in any way be held responsible for any kind of damages in relation to using the model or the products developed.

Copyright and legal STUFF

IntroductionWelcome to this tutorial on the AVITAE Innovation- and Entrepreneurship model for teachers. The model was developed in the auspecies of the European AVITAE-project and relies on ideas, methods and techniques of the INDEX/ Designtoimprovelife-education-model and student-centeret, problem-based projectwork. See Signe Holm Larsens documents for more about this or on the Designtoimprovelife Education webpage.

Educational platformThe model is meant to bridge the gap between the past, the present and the future with innovation, branding and entrepreneurship in order to generate solution and ideas to new products and markets.

The model is based on the following educational principles.

• Problem-based project-oriented work

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Introduction

• Interdependent team work, sum-ups and feedback

• Creative work

• Active and authentic learning; working with real-world problems.

Phases and evaluationEach phase ends with a sum-up-phase ( build in evaluation structure, to ensure the cohesion of the work), where the students sum up the work done so far: what is accomplished and what needs to be done. This is outlined on a sum-up poster and then presented to other groups, who can give feedback. The poster-work and the sum-ups link the phases in the model.

The tutorial

• Start with this introduction

• Continue with the video here.

• Work through the phases.

• Questions, please mail the author.

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Bridging the gapThe basic idea behind the AVITAE innovation, branding and entrepreneurship model is how to bridge the gap between the past and the present in order to generate ideas and solutions to current problems, inspired by former solutions. Furthermore to use these ideas to generate companies and new products.

In order to use or get inspired by e.g. the wiking’s way of crossing the Russian rivers, the ideas of Plato or the way tar was produced and used for preserving lines, the students need a solid knowledge about all these things, concepts, persons and myths. They also need to know about what is creativity, innovation, branding and entrepreneurship

Learning goalsTo be able to differentiate between creativity and innovation.

What is innovation? A prerequisite for making innovative solutions is to have an idea about what is the difference between creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Make the students discuss these concept as an introduction to the work with design of innovative solutions to problems.

A simple way to define these concepts is as follows.

IDEAS TO INNOVATION WARMING UP EXERCISES

❖ See the “IDEO - The deep dive” video❖ See Herman Konings video fra TedXLeuven❖ Discus, what is innovation and how can the concept be

qualified?❖ Discus what does entrepreneurship mean to the

students?❖

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SEKTION 1

Warm-Up/kick off

We understand creativity as being the divergent proces where you develop lots of new ideas.

Innovation is like creativity, but convergent. You develop lots of new and useful ideas, but directed to the solution of a problem.

Entrepreneurship. You innovate with the purpose of making your own company and capitalise on it. A new concept is intrapreneurship, meaning, that you develop innovative and solution-based ideas, but in an existing company or organisation, not in you own company.

Concepts about innovationIt may also be a good thing to discuss the following ways to characterise innovation with the students (I.-III). Let the students find examples of local and global innovations and products and ask them to use the concepts in the presentations of sum-ups. Let the students use these concepts.

I. Local / GlobalGlobal innovations are solutions which are new and innovative for the entire planet. These kinds of innovations are of course very difficult to develop. Local innovation is far easier. Local innovations are solutions with a local scope. It can be to use existing technologies and solutions to solve local problems. For instance, bicycle lanes may not be a new innovation, but used in a particular local setting, it may be a life saving innovation.

Radical/ incrementalRadical innovation means developing brand new products and solutions, never seen before meeting completely new users’ needs. Again this is difficult. Incremental innovation is far easier using an existing innovation and just refining is a bit more.

Questions, projects and problems Before the students can design solutions to real world problems using methods from innovation and entrepreneurship, it may be a good thing to discus the difference between a question, a problem and a project.

One way to understand/define these concepts could be as follows:

Questions are obvious for students. Questions may have simple answers, but problems are more complex than questions. Projects are more complex than problems and needs carefull studies and use of methods. Project are real-world problems, which calls for solutions and have a target groups, in need for the solutions.

Domain knowledge

As we will cover in the next section, it is of crucial importance that the students exploit their domain knowlege in the innovation processes.

Therefore, it is be a good thing to underline this before the innovative processes. A lot of methods can be used there, for instance brainstorming, note-taking, small group-presentations and similar methods.

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2. OPEN SPACE: From themes to problem-definition

Introduction.

The first phase relates to finding a problem to work with.

Open Space is a method for getting from themes and ideas to concrete problems in a very student-centeret (and active) way. The students will have to work actively and form design teams which will work with the problems defined.

Learning goalsTo get from ideas to problem defintions.

How to1. Write keywords, concepts and sentenses on pieces of paper, one on each paper. It can also be

chunks of text, famous quotes, pictures, comics or excerpts from newspaper-headlines. 2. Spread the cards on the floor. Let the students move around for some time and examine the cards. They are not allowed to speak. When they have investigated the concepts and words on the cards, let the students collect the cards in heaps they would like to work with and which they think could form the basis for a project. 3. The students must place themselves on the heap of cards, they would like to work with,

PREPARE WARMING UP EXERCISES

❖ Make cards with key concepts word, persons, methods ❖ Spread them out on the floor❖ Make the students collect cards they think could form a

problem, they would like to work with.

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SEKTION 2

Phase 1: Prepare, Open Space and Sum-Ups

thus forming a design-team. 4. Afterwards, students must try to define a problem out of the cards they collected. 5. Sum-up. In this phase, the students present what the have worked out on a poster and present to other groups and gets feedback. Also the teachers must accept the problems defined and give feedback.

Scaffolding OS-processes.Based on the experiences of using the model, it is a good thing to give the students quite strickt deadlines.

The cards with words can be done by the teacher or by the students - or the teacher can do some and the students can add some, in order to engage the students in the work of problem-defintion. In principle any curriculum could be the point of departure of an Open Space activity, but in order to bridge the gap between past and present half of the card should be coining former problem-domaing, former groups and the rest new user groups new problem domains.

• In order to base the innovative work on a solid subject-related matter, it is of course important, that the word and concepts of the cards are something, that the students have lots of knowledge about or acces to materials they can study.

• When students place the cards in heaps, they might want a card in a different heap - but they are not allowed to discuss. In this situation, the teacher can copy a card.

• It may be a good idea also to let students make cards with ideas, but it is important, that these concepts reside in the problem-domain, otherwise a project-work about end up with problems which are quite

irrelevant - also try to avoid that the students can work with themselves as target groups.

• Students need a nice combination of different words/concepts to define good problems. For instance, if they only collect nouns, it is difficult to define a problem. They need possibly a place, a period in time, groups of people, potential problem-areas etc. One solution to this can be to mark the card with colored dots, red=a place, blue= a period;

green= a problem area etc., and then instruct the students that they must have at least one of each color in their heaps.

• If students cannot define problems out of the cards, they got, teachers must supervise them. One way to do this is of course to discuss with them, bring in subject-related knowledge, make them study or another to add a card (which the teacher makes), removing a card, change a card and thus narrowing or opening the problem-area.

Sum-up and feedback/feedforward processes.It is important, that after all phases the groups meet, present the result of their work and give feedback and feed-forward to the other groups.

We emphasize that it is feed-forward, not an evaluation or exam. It is crucial that these processes are quick and directed to what can be improved in next phase.

Post-it-labels can be a good and very short way to give feedback, only writing a few keywords and placing them on the sum-up-poster.

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IntroductionIt is very important to relate problems to target group needs in order to narrow the scope of the problems and make sure that the designed solution meet the users’ needs.

One easy way to do this is Personas. Personas is really an imaginary but realistic poster about a target user. On this poster, you can write a name, interests, age, sex, education, favorite holiday-places and more and also make a drawing of the user. The idea is to refer to this user by name when discusing the solutions. If you find it appropriate, you can make more than one persona, for instance a man and a woman.

The model consists of various methods. You can use methods which suit the same needs, e.g. instead of Personas, you can use other methods of gaining knowledge about the users needs.

INNOVATION WARMING UP EXERCISES

❖ See the clip about the Shopping Cart❖ See Herman Konings-clip on TEDX LUEVEN❖ Discus, what innovation is.❖ Discuss what entrepreneurship means to the students?

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SEKTION 3

Phase 2: Understanding target groups

If the students learn more about the user, by statistics, questionaires or the like, the personas can be detailed or modified.

How to1. Use one large piece of paper per persona. 2. Let the students make a hand-drawn picture of the prototypical memeber of the target group. 3. Make the students make a detailed story about this persona and let them write important key points on the poster, e.g. name, job, education, preferences etc. 4. Now let the students in groups present their person an get feedback from the others and also presents how this user/persona will relate to the problem defined.

For instance "Mr. Jones is 45 years old mechanic. His IT-skills is on a basic user level and when he find holidays, he uses only…."

Scaffolding the target groups analysis

• Having a poster from ealier can be a nice way to present the idea.

• Listen to the stories, when students present, give feedback

• Emphasise, that the personas must be realistic and relevant

• Make sure, that the students use their personas in order to relate to the problems defined.

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IntroductionIn the mockup or prototyping session mock-up, prototypes of solutions for the target groups are built.

How to

• Provide lot of materials, tools, molding clay, paint, cardboard-boxes, tape and glue, tools like scissors and knifes, straws, ballons and other things, which can be used to make models of innovative solutions to the problems.

• Set the time with deadline, for instance 1 hour for building

• Stop the processes and let the students make sum-up poster of what they have achieved and what they are lacking. They must answer: Why is this a solution for the target group?

Scaffolding OS-processes.• Ask the students why this is innovative and why it solves problems for the identified user group.

• Ask them to reflect on the previous phases.

PREPARING FOR MOCKUP-PROCESSES

❖ Provide access to materiales and tools.(Find a nice place to work)❖ Ask the students to bring boxes etc. from home❖ If knives for cutting cardbord etc. are used, paint , -

remember to bring some cans, water and protection for the tables.

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SEKTION 4

Prototyping solution / Mock-ups

• Make them reflect on, wheather this is an illustration of the problem OR a mockup for a solution.

• Try to make them characterise their innovation using the concepts of local/global and radical/incremental innovation.

• Sometimes groups are making models with quite low degree of innovation. Try to get the students out of their “comfort zone”, giving them ideas to make more radical innovations.

• If a group cannot find out what to build, ask them to narrow the problem or the target group/persona.

• The internet supplies lots of tools, but in order to make the students communicate and actually build and work with the solutions, it is better not to use the Internet too much. Sometimes it is necessary to study in order to learn more about the problem domain, but this is done in earlier phases.

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Introduction

Branding is the proces of adding stories and extra values to a product. After mockup-phase a possible solution to your problem, develop an elevator pitch for your solution -brand it!The elevator pitch was originally a short speech, meant to convince an investor (in an elevator between two meetings), that s/he should invest money in a product. Convince, persuade, brand, commercialise - this is your once-in-a-lifetime option to get funding to realise the product of your LIFE!

How to

Start with why this product is relevant, becasuse _. User will like it, because , instead of the competitors, becasuse . Its solves a real world problem, namely _

BRANDING WARMING UP EXERCISES

❖ The elevator pitch

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SEKTION 5

Branding