Can Design Thinking Drive Creativity and Customer-Centricity in Entrepreneurship?
Design Thinking is a process for creative problem solving. It is a human-centered discipline which encourages organizations to focus on the people they’re creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes (https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/what-is-design-thinking).
More often than not, entrepreneurs create products that don’t sell in the market, or rather, that don’t have a market at all. They design products from their own perspective and not the client’s perspective, hoping to force-feed these products to the market. When these products fail, it is also usually difficult and costly to redesign after mass production. Design Thinking forces entrepreneurs to first design from the market’s perspective so that whatever the entrepreneur is making adequately fits the market’s needs. Because it emphasizes on building successive proto-types, the cost of redesign is also lower. This is the reason why most organizations now use the Design Thinking process to creatively solve problems and create products that meet consumer needs.
Start Smart is, for the second time, bringing a Design Thinking workshop for young
Basotho entrepreneurs. The aim of the workshop is to share the principles of
Design Thinking with the participants. It also aims to show them how they can
apply techniques in their daily business activities and projects that can help
produce products and services that are valuable to customers.
Entrepreneurs in different business sectors and those working in corporates share
their experiences, and how they apply some of the Design Thinking principles in
their projects or business activities. Aspiring entrepreneurs will learn how they can
apply the Design Thinking techniques to come up with creative solutions that fit
their end-users’ needs.
The workshop will include an address by Lerato Mphaka, an information system
professional with a passion for technology’s ability to connect people and foment
human effort. She holds qualifications in Information systems, client centric
business strategy, project management and business and systems analysis with
Design Thinking principles.
The one day workshop will be held at Kick4Life on the 4th of May 2019 from 09:30
to 16:00. For more info regarding the workshop, please contact Maneo Seekane
(Ms) at +266 5788 5234, [email protected]
