Leadership Forum on Education

DESIGN EDUCATION — DESIGN & ENTREPRENEURSHIP:

What will be the challenges? What are the possible roles of design in entrepreneurship?

How to equip successful start-ups with the mindset, process and methods of design entrepreneurship?

Unlike the traditional business environment, business organisations today operate in an entrepreneurial environment, marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Design is known for adding or creating value in entrepreneurial business in various ways and perspectives, including an approach to entrepreneurial opportunity, a process as entrepreneurial logic and methods applied in the entrepreneurial process. The integrative nature of design synergises technology, marketability and aesthetics efficiently.

In this new context, the designer as entrepreneur seeks opportunities and aligns stakeholders in the complex and dynamic context to achieve sustainable and practical innovation. Entrepreneur as designer develops and applies design thinking and design management capability to business development. These imply the challenges of design education for the next generation of designers. What might be the relationships between design and entrepreneurship? How to empower our design students to face future challenges?

Our discussion will include but not be limited to three directions.

(1) Design in entrepreneurship: the designer’s role in an entrepreneurial organisation or a project team? How does a designer participate and contribute as a team member for crossdisciplinary collaboration? Or to lead the business as a founder or co-founder?

(2) Design for entrepreneurship: what might be an effective design method or tool for entrepreneurship? What kind of core knowledge and skills would design students need for entrepreneurship? And

(3) Design with entrepreneurship: How design could collaborate with other functions in an entrepreneurial business process or project to achieve success in product and market performance? As external resources, how does design serve entrepreneurial projects?

2022Leadership Forum on Design Education — a concurrent event under theBusiness of Design Week (BODW) programme is jointly presented by The Hong KongPolytechnic University School of Design, Hong Kong Design Institute and HongKong Design Centre. The theme of this year is “DESIGN & ENTREPRENEURSHIP”.The Leadership Forum will be a full-day event bringing together renownedleaders from industry and academia for high-level dialogues and discussions toprovide insights to shape the future of design and entrepreneurship.