ENTREPRENEURSHIP & INNOVATION LECTURER

Entrepreneurship Lecturer: Creating Innovative prototypes with a go-to-market strategy

ENTREPRENEURSHIP & INNOVATION LECTURER

Entrepreneurship Lecturer: Creating Innovative prototypes with a go-to-market strategy

Entrepreneurship and Innovation are the latest trends in higher education. While most of these subjects are usually taught using theoretical concepts, I try to keep it at a minimum. In my opinion the students only get a grasp of what entrepreneurship really is if they succeed to create a tangible business concept.

Launching my own company La Lunchbox in New Delhi was the most exciting decision I have made in my career. To this day I still consider it one of my biggest professional achievement for which I have been awarded “Entrepreneur of the Month” by the Indo-French Chamber of Commerce.

That is why during my Entrepreneurship and Innovation lectures, I make sure that the students are passionate and excited about their business idea. And by using my UX knowledge,  the best learning outcome for them is to have a viable product they can showcase and pitch.

Finding a Business Idea

I usually introduce two methods to come up with a business idea.

The first one is Blue Ocean strategy, or how to capture an untapped market. Coming up with a business idea can be overwhelming, so this tool makes it easier to break the ice. One of my favorite activity is asking the students to design a Gym made for people who don’t go to the gym. They usually come up with very interesting ideas and start unleashing their creativity.

Then I introduce Design Thinking. I usually ask the students to list down problems they are facing in the everyday life. Then they design empathy maps to figure out the pains and gains that the users are facing. It then becomes very easy to come up with a concept. One concept that I will be highlighting here is how students came up with an idea to stop throwing away food that is in their fridge.

You can see in the images that with the right tools, the process to come up with that idea is quite simple!

empathy map - entrepreneurship lecturer

wireframe entrepreneurship lecturer

final product entrepreneurship lecturer

Prototyping and Testing Entrepreneurship Lecturer

After defining the business idea, the first thing I ask my students is to gather data from their target audience. Through the help of a chatbot, they can ask the right questions in order to understand the user’s persona and behavior.

Once they have enough information, they can prioritize it and start wire-framing a prototype for a mobile application. Then, they will design a low-fidelity prototype using Adobe XD. At every step, they will ask the audience to review it by sending a link where the users can actually interact with the app. Once the application has a positive feedback they will design a final high-fidelity prototype which will be their product launch.

In this example the student’s app synchronizes the ingredients in the kitchen to find the best match for recipes. The recipes can be sorted by type of cuisine and filtered by percentage of ingredients that the user already has. If the user chooses a recipe then the ingredients are deducted form his kitchen “stock”. The user can also select in one click where to purchase the missing ingredient by comparing several vendors.

wireframe entrepreneurship lecturer

final product entrepreneurship lecturer

Using innovative technologies Entrepreneurship Lecturer

Students usually have a hard time gathering useful information through online or offline surveys. I believe that the best way to empathize is to study the reactions and behaviors of users. For this reason I train students to build chatbots, the user interaction can be studied and give a better insight on behavioral patterns

Once they start protyping, I train them to use Adobe XD. Although it is considered as a tool to build apps, it can be used to create a virtual prototype of a product or a service. User behavior can be analyzed via heatmaps. And as an Entrpreneurship lecturer I guarantee that these tools are very useful during  this period of Social Distancing!

Prototype of a mask ideated by the students of Stenden Thailand

Pitching for funds

The last part of the Entrepreneurship and innovation course is how to prepare a solid business plan in order to pitch to potential investors. Using different tools and business planning methods such as the PEST analysis and VRIO matrix, the students can forecast how future trends might impact their business.

What I expect from my students is to share a long term vision with their shareholders. During their final jury presentation I ask them  to explain what is their strategy in the upcoming years. They will justify the features they would add to their product in order to stay relevant in a competitive market.

Entrepreneurship & Innovation lecturer

some achievements

100+ business plans

created and pitched by my students

50+ mobile apps prototypes designed by students

designed by my students

One student finalist of the prestigious

24h Entrepreneurship Challenge

Would you like me to give a guest lecture or facilitate a workshop about Digital Marketing / Social Media?

I am Digital Marketing lecturer based in Bangkok but I can travel anywhere in South-East Asia or teach online! Feel free to get in touch

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