Tuesday September 25th, 2018

Wochenzettel 18/38
Not just do it. Start up!

Design Thinking? What was that again? None of the students had to seriously ask themselves this question. Because instead of shedding the newly acquired knowledge from the first module in the brain stem, it was put to direct practical use on 14 and 15 September.

On these days, the “Social Innovation Center” of the Hanover region together with “NEXSTER”, the Entrepreneurship Center of the Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts, organized a future workshop in Expo Plaza 2. More than 30 interested people from various fields worked with the 24 students to develop business innovations in the field of “Health and Age(ing)”.

Friday began with an introduction to Design Thinking by our Prof. Gunnar Spellmeyer and a field report by Markus Bönig, Managing Director of Vitabook, with information from the everyday life of a start-up in the health sector.

Then it was on: “Reservations out, empathy on! In our teams, we asked the problem owners who had travelled to the event about their experiences and opinions from their daily work. And it quickly became clear that the topic “Health and Age(ing)” is a very emotional one, which does not lack problems in our ageing society. The real achievement was to focus on a specific problem among all the really interesting topics. Once that was done, it didn’t take long and the atrium suddenly shone in a flood of neon post-its. Each as a carrier of an (sometimes crazy) idea.

The next challenge awaited us on Saturday morning: sorting, selecting and concretizing ideas. At noon the innovations were presented for the first time. The subsequent lecture by Prof Dr Christian Lehmann activated hidden reserves by informing us about the significance of a “killer feature” and showing how the “lean startup” idea differs from the classic start-up process. It was precisely this information that helped us take the step from a well-intentioned idea to a serious business model.

At the Elevator Pitch in the evening, it became exciting: A jury of experts evaluated our concepts and business models and should choose a winner. What no one had expected – there was not one winner, but two! The teams around the ideas “omni treff” and “senior coaches” convinced with their innovative power, empathy and feasibility.

But even for those who weren’t in the winning teams, the workshop was a real gain. Because working with the Design Thinking method is something completely different than simply having read the individual steps and being able to memorize them. Ultimately, the experience was very valuable to each of us. In the end, everyone had a picture of what it felt like to work in interdisciplinary teams, everyone had their emotional highs and lows and everyone was constantly taken out of their comfort zone thanks to the surprising “energizers”.

The momentum of the first week is maintained and off we go in the study everyday life!

Daniel Gurka