From PhD to Innovator: Introduction to Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship ONLINE

Aims

Ignite your innovative potential. Reflect your skillset as an Innovator and discover what you already bring to the table! Practise your entrepreneurial mindset and meet other PhDs or postdocs with great ideas. How much of an innovator is in you? Explore the Design Thinking techniques in small teams with the help of the online collaboration tool MIRO. Based on practical examples, you learn how to empathise with users, as well as brainstorm and assess ideas to prepare for the rapid prototyping finale.

Content

Day 1: 9:00 – 15:00

Part I:
Your Innovation Skills

• Get to know the different aspects of an innovator's skill set
• Reflect about your personal skill set as researcher, innovator, and entrepreneur
• Understand how those skills contribute to a team

Part II:
Design Thinking I

• Get to know the Design Thinking approach
• Work in an interdisciplinary team
• Change perspectives and build empathy

Day 2: Day 1: 9:00 – 15:00

Part I:
Design Thinking II

• Design Thinking and User Research
• Interview your peers and learn from their perspectives
• “How might we?”-questions and brainstorming methods

Part II:

Design Thinking III:

• Critical function of different types of prototypes
• Create your own prototype in a team
• Introduction to testing and iteration

Methods

• Design Thinking techniques
• Design Thinking Interview Guidelines
• Digital prototyping
• Idea rating
• Interdisciplinary team work
• Visionary thinking & brainstorming exercises
• Individual/group/plenum reflection

Target Group

All Doctoral Candidates & Postdocs

About the Trainer

The trainers and coaches of Young Entrepreneurs in Science, a learning and training program of the Falling Walls Foundation in Berlin, have many years of experience facilitating innovation Workshops for PhDs and Postdocs, imparting knowledge in interactive learning spaces and empowering scientists to answer the questions 'How much innovation is in my PhD?' and 'What impact can I create with my research?'. Katharina Rosin is a certified organizational developer, mediator and systemic coach and Kathrin Mengis is a certified UX & Design Thinking Trainer and Start-Up experience as a founder and co-founder.

Workload

Course attendance: 12h

Feature

Once registration is open, applications will be collected for 24 hours and course places allocated by lot. All registrations received after the initial 24h period will be put on a waiting list and assigned on a first come, first served basis.

Course places/places on the waiting list will be confirmed by e-mail. Course registrations can only be canceled before the registration period ends (send an e-mail to grace@unibas.ch). Full course attendance is mandatory. Participants who fail to attend a course without prior notification or withdraw after the registration deadline are subject to a fee of CHF 30. In addition, participants who cancel their course registration at a later point in time, are absent without an excuse or do not attend the entire course will, for reasons of fairness, not be considered for course registration in the following semester and will be removed from other courses offered in the same semester. Please find the detailed regulations on the Transferable Skills Homepage.