Transforming an Idea into a Business With Design Thinking

Many of us have numerous ideas throughout our lives to that we feel can add value to society and from which we can benefit financially. However, we find ourselves perplexed on two levels:

1- Where to start to build an idea into a business?

2- What are the various dimensions and activities needed to launch an idea into a business?

This book will give you a structured approach to launch your idea into a business by following specific steps. This approach is grounded in "Design Thinking" and has been crafted after decades of use in the Silicon Valley helping companies from large enterprises to start-ups with solving problems and launching businesses.

This book describes in a step-by-step manner, an 18-step innovation framework, grounded in Design Thinking, to take an idea from a fuzzy concept to a viable business. This framework is grounded in the belief that all solutions solve human problems and strive to augment human capabilities by introducing a new way of doing things using technology or otherwise. The framework is divided into following three stages:

Understanding the Problem -- to have a clear idea of the desirability by key stakeholder(s).

Devising Solutions -- to determine feasibility of the new approach by going through following steps: Ideation, Prioritization, Storyboard, Prototype, Test, Use Case and Experience Implications.

Crafting a Business -- to get an insight into viability from business perspective.

As you go through each stage, you’ll be making lots of assumptions. These assumptions are the key driver for the risk in the pursuit and must be validated as the team continues to work on the idea. This process leads to the fourth stage:

Managing Risk -- to have an honest idea of the inherent risk in the pursuit by reviewing assumptions and risk assessment.

Mashood Alam is a Senior Director, Innovation & Digital Transformation at SAP’s Design & Co-innovation Center. He is a senior business innovation leader with a unique blend of business, technology and design expertise. He drives co-innovation and Digital Transformation, Innovative Thinking, Innovation Center setup and out of the box approaches to identifying and solving problems leveraging cutting edge technologies including Machine Learning, Internet of Things, Blockchain, Computer Vision, Chat bots, Cloud, Big Data, Mobile and networks. He excels at orchestrating and leading highly immersive engagements with C-level executives and directors to align strategy and generate ideas for new business models. In addition, he is a consistent over-achiever with six US Patents and two prestigious global awards.