2.3. Trends and Entrepreneurship

Agility - This will help you navigate a world based on experiments and continued learning. The best way to practice it is to make a hypothesis and then test it. Instead of building “ready” products and services that need time investment, create prototypes and validate them, learn from the feedback you receive. Agility is also your willingness to make mistakes, being imperfect and open to criticism. The “permanent beta approach” is already a normalised way to build digital solutions like apps, and it’s applied during the product design process in companies like Patagonia. They don’t create new sport clothing without testing and say: “Testing is an integral part of the Patagonia industrial design process, and it needs to be included in every part of this process. It involves testing competitors’ products; “quick and dirty” testing of new ideas to see if they are worth pursuing; fabric testing; “living?” with a new product to judge how hot the sales would be; testing production samples for function and durability and so on; and test marketing product to see if people will buy it”8

2.3. Trends and Entrepreneurship

Trends primarily indicate a general direction in which fluctuating behaviours might be leaning towards. Our awareness of what is happening around us and what changes are taking place influence company products and services. Awareness of changing directions and knowledge about them also help entrepreneurs make strategic decisions. Real innovation includes changing the culture of the organisation, maybe by taking a different perspective on business and understanding that not everything is based purely on rational thinking. Trends are a result of many coinciding phenomena that take place in the world - on political, economic and social levels. Thinking about the future is not wishful thinking! By asking the question "What will the future look like?” we are able to better understand the causes and mechanisms behind change in a particular direction. Design Thinking, with its customer centricity and (especially) user-research tools allows understanding of customer needs and wants NOW. More tools might be needed to develop insights about the future, though. This is where Futures Thinking can be helpful for entrepreneurs eager to develop new skills that help them identify signals, change, global trends AND find a link between them and their business.

8 Let my people go surfing, Y.Chouinard, 2016

2.4. Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainability in Business

As the main actors in climate change, both as victims and oppressors, we can’t seem to stop behaving as if we are a family that enjoys picnicing on train tracks. Despite alarming signs about environmental and social disasters, far too often business goes on as usual.

Current environmental and societal challenges make it clear: business and societal values must unite. Large and small enterprises have begun to align their products and services with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the global goals set in 2015 by the UN to achieve a better and sustainable future for people and the planet. Other entrepreneurs build, from scratch, enterprises where profit comes in tandem with social impact. It is important to underline that it is possible to merge both elements!

The Design Thinking tools listed below can help you, as a social entrepreneur, focus on societal benefits and run your business. This is not just a strategic decision, it’s also a choice that your customers make, especially when we are talking about millennials or Generation Z. The research shows that these generations stay faithful to the brands that share their values. That trend has been confirmed especially during Covid-19 when those customers followed and supported especially purpose-driven brands (Deloitte, 2021 Global Marketing Trends Report).

So where is the impact of business needed most? The list is as long as the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the UN which offer: an ambitious but urgent agenda to combine People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnerships (5P) to “achieve a better and sustainable future for all”. This is not only about societal impact, but also about environmental and economical ones. It is very important for entrepreneurs to understand that societal value is not only a “nice-to-have” but a necessity and a common responsibility. It’s referred to as an “outside-in” look at the business: Societal and environmental needs represent huge unserved market opportunities but could represent huge economic costs if not addressed correctly. Focusing on creating a shared value for society creates business opportunities for companies. Unlike philanthropy, the outside-in look and shared values do not minimise the effects of business on society, but rather, maximises the competitive value of solving social problems for new customers and markets9 .

Acting responsibly, entrepreneurs can create new value in several fields such as:

Health Care and the Ageing Population: The Covid-19 crisis put in stark relief the need for innovative solutions in health care services that use connectivity, robotics, data analytics and also smart “human” solutions for prevention and treatments. These reasons are why personalised solutions are needed as well as smart ideas adapted to the users needs.

9 www.sdgimpact.lu

Education and Learning: Covid-19 underlined the need for digital learning, training for teachers, new media utilisation, in-community learning as well as other aspects that need to be improved. What will learning in the future look like? Education technology(ed-tech) solutions combine technology with educational practises and focus largely on peer-education online, where young people share their knowledge between each other.

Urbanisation: On one side of the coin, we hear about smart cities whose connected services allow more safety, speed and efficiency. On the flip side, there are large civic movements like the Transition Network that change the “community”landscape by creating “slow life” services that bring people together. Covid-19 made inhabitants aware of special connections that are possible to be shared with their closest neighbours, and local small businesses. What business opportunity is being created here?

Environmental Sustainability: Scroll down the web page of your favourite brand and check their awareness about their carbon footprint, suppliers, production processes, circularity of raw materials, reparability, etc. If this is non-existent will you still trust their contribution to the shared-value? It is time for “WE” now, use it in your business, solve real problems.

Case study: VEJA sneakers

Veja is a French company, producer of sneakers with a strong focus on transparency, fair trade and social and environmental responsibility. It collaborates incredibly closely with the factory that produces its sneakers to ensure the best work practices. Its motto is: ‘Standing up with one foot in design and with the other one in social responsibility.’ Veja sources natural rubber directly from Seringueiro communities in the Amazon rainforest to save on water, energy and harmful emissions. Besides that it collaborates only with those factories in Brazil that respect human rights, it also follows fair trade rules: Cotton and rubber are purchased directly from the producers in Brazil and Peru, with whom VEJA signs a 1-year contract and pre-finances their cotton harvest as much as 40%. That means that organic cotton is bought one year before it is transformed into sneakers. https://project.veja-store.com/

2.5 Design Thinking inside organisations: Why agility matters

One of the key aspects that will allow an organisation to navigate the VUCA world is agility, and this is only possible in a team that works together, shares information and is close to its customer and market. As this organisational change will not happen overnight, Design Thinking is offering a helping hand in the way work is organised and how the team members relate to each other.