Design thinking for digital innovation Erasmus Project

Project Title

Design thinking for digital innovation

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

DigiThink stands for Design thinking for digital innovation. The project aims to develop a new course to be implemented as part of HEIs’ curricula on this topic. The idea behind DigiThink is to apply design thinking methodology for digital innovative business creation. The project has four key intellectual outputs: Course syllabus and learning methodology; training and learning materials, open educational resources. it is based on three concepts: design thinking, social and digital innovation. Design thinking incorporates constituent or consumer insights in depth and rapid prototyping, all aimed at getting beyond the assumptions that block effective solutions. Design thinking—inherently optimistic, constructive, and experiential—addresses the needs of the people who will consume a product or service and the infrastructure that enables it. Businesses are embracing design thinking because it helps them be more innovative, better differentiate their brands, and bring their products and services to market faster. Nonprofits are beginning to use design thinking as well to develop better solutions to social problems. Design thinking crosses the traditional boundaries between public, for-profit, and nonprofit sectors. By working closely with the clients and consumers, design thinking allows high-impact solutions to bubble up from below rather than being imposed from the top. We are following the five steps in the process – empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test – leading to development of new digital products and services by students working in teams who wish to develop new social and digital businesses.Social entrepreneurship is an emerging field focused on formation and growth of ventures (nonprofit, for-profit or hybrid) that have at their core a mission to have a positive social or environmental impact on the world. The field includes founders, funders, intermediaries, academics, board members and more; social enterprise: a social purpose venture with a business model that relies primarily (or exclusively) on earned income to cover its operations. The last output Model and guide for implementation will provide guidance and recommendations on how to implement this model in other universities and institutions who wish to teach entrepreneurship, apply design thinking for digital and social innovations, drive innovative products and services. This model and guide will be used in order to produce publications and JCR article about the project. The aim of this future action is to promote the diffusion of the project activities and to raise awareness about this topic in education. he final version of the learning materials will be designed for distance learning in the learning management system – LMS (like Moodle). This includes helping students start digital business by using step-by-step process based on design thinking to generate not only concepts but prototypes that can be undertaken as a business by new business models and/or provided to existing businesses and social ventures for further use and implementation.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 285659,84 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITET PO BIBLIOTEKOZNANIE I INFORMACIONNI TEHNOLOGII & Country: BG

Project Partners

• KLUB PO UPRAVLENIE NA ZNANIYA, INOVACII I STRATEGII
• UNIVERZITA KONSTANTINA FILOZOFA V NITRE
• FUNDACION TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION
• UNIVERSIDAD DE LA IGLESIA DE DEUSTO ENTIDAD RELIGIOSA
• Training 2000 psc