When I began teaching entrepreneurship I struggled with how to teach the development of the product idea and the value proposition for the customer. I got much insight from reading what great designers had to say. Eventually I became a student of the design process and produced many posts here on SF about design.
My thinking has continued to evolve and now in the first lecture in my entrepreneurship course I draw the distinction between entrepreneurship, a finance course and design. In a finance course, one learns theories and, if lucky, the practical application of the theory, but there is no tangible product that the student takes away. In both entrepreneurship and design the development process leads to a tangible result. In the case of design, a new product, and in entrepreneurship a new business model.
In this MITX video Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the MIT Media Lab, shares my view on design as the model for entrepreneurship but takes it a step further. Nicholas believes that designs skills are integral to business success. Nicholas also has some other interesting views, including that the neuroscience of the brain is the new media.
