Innovation is one of the most important aspects in both the business and the design environment, because of one reason: everything changes. Markets are never stable, customers’ needs and wishes change and technology evolves. This leaves companies with the option to either adapt to the ever-changing conditions they are exposed to or to be changed in the face of competitive pressure. However, innovation should happen in the right direction. The idea of innovating just for the sake of growth is outdated and obsolete. The world is out of balance and our current economy is failing us, which means that it is of high importance that we move towards a balance in which we meet the needs of all within the means of our planet. Outside Inc. tries to contribute to this highly ambitious goal by creating innovation acceleration programs together with existing organisations that will help them find new products and services. These programs combine the entrepreneurial qualities of people with a more sustainable and social mind-set. In order to make a real impact, Outside Inc. currently needs to grow. Not necessarily grow to become the biggest or the most profitable, but grow to become more resilient. They believe that this growth should be accomplished by creating more recurring long-term relationships instead of the single short-term relationship that are currently mostly formed with their clients. An extensive research was conducted in order to generate insights into why client relationships are mostly single short-term. A company analysis, a case study of 8 cases and a client analysis based on 6 interviews and 2 observations uncovered, among other insights, three underlying reasons: a miss-alignment in the expectations, a diminishing of the perceived added value and a doubt about the effectiveness of the program. In order to provide the first step towards solving these problems, a toolset is developed. This toolset consists of a workshop format, an A1 canvas and a set of cards that function as a conversation facilitation tool. The toolset is to be used in a kick-off session at the beginning of a project by the core-team. This core-team exists of two program managers and one to three representatives of the client. By using this toolset together with the core-team, Outside Inc. program managers are able to manage the expectations, provide proper demarcation, build an understanding of the client, make the client co-owner of the process and provide a foundation for a possible new fit in the future. Furthermore, Outside Inc. is advised to continue with the improvement of their own identity and value proposition. By doing so, Outside Inc. can make the fit between the client and the value proposition easier and more adaptable to the evolution of the client. It is also advised that Outside Inc. continues to do more client research then before. Not only by means of traditional customer research (e.g. evaluation forms/surveys etc.) but also by personally interviewing clients after approximately 1 year after finishing the program. By doing so, Outside Inc. gains valuable information but also builds a new connection with the client that could result in future programs, which could in turn, result in a recurring long-term relationship.

Ericis b.v is a dynamic real estate organisation which provides numerous services in real estate. This project concerns project management department. The operational team of this department is relatively small and exists out of six people. Although this department is quite small, their demand on the real-estate market is not. The consistent successes of their projects, which are created through their high level of execution and premium services and products, cause an increase of demands and projects. A consequence of this success is that an imbalance is created between the amount of work and the available employees. As the pressure and workload increases the team starts to experience numerous difficulties which refrain them from seamless project management processes. Once a lot of projects start to run simultaneously, certain existing problems in the organisation, of which the team might have been unaware, become very prominent and can’t be ignored anymore. One of the most prominent difficulties the team encounters is the lack of an overview regarding the project processes. The organisation indicates that next to the large number of projects and small number of employees, this problem is foremost caused by the lack of a standardized project process. The team does not have a clear documented process which they can hold onto when for example the projects increase and the overview blurs. In order to solve the difficulties they cope with, one of the steps is the implementation of a tool which supports and accommodates the organisation with the difficulties they face. The following design challenge is created: ‘Design and develop a tool which facilitates the management of the project process as well as the management of all running projects.‘ This tool will both support the team dealing with the difficulties and solve the existing situation. In order to solve this design challenge a design process is conducted. This design process exists out of a research & analysis phase, a ideation phase, a conceptualisation phase and finally an embodiment phase. Within this process elements are discovered, defined, developed and designed. From discovering the underlying core problems, to developing ideas based on the defined design requirements and finally developing a concept which is also user tested. Eri-tool is an interactive smart app which provides management support regarding the phasing, hierarchical lines and decision documentation of each project. This application requires specific project input which is to be defined in the project plan- and decision documentation templates. From this input, numerous fundamental elements are generated such as the long- and short term overviews (plannings) of the project process. The user can zoom in and out on the project-phasing overview, as much as preferred or required. The application also contains personal pages, project pages and an archive which offers the users a continuous learning process. The Eri-tool is an application which guides, supports, enhances and optimises the process and projects management by not only facilitating the management process however also by accommodating the required fundamental elements to perform to full potential.

IntroductionThis Strategic Product Design master thesis aims to find a solution to the problem of ill fitting care trajectories that result in overtreatment, higher costs and negatively impacted health outcomes. This project was created with the recently founded Reinier Haga Orthopedic CenterLiterature and Field studiesTo understand the problem and identify solutions, research studies were conducted.A literature study identified potentials solutions, tt also provided insights into the condition of knee arthrosis and how healthcare is currently organised.Two field studies were also done. The first were interning sessions that provided additional knowledge on the organisation of the healthcare.The second were interviews with patients and treatment providers which, resulted in an understanding of what patients and medical professionals miss in the organisation of the care trajectory.Design goalFrom the literature and field studies came that a cause for the problem is the interaction between stakeholders. Information exchange between the medical professionals was chosen as the design problem. As a lack of information about a patient as a whole explains the ill fitting care trajectories. The missing information was identified as implicit contextual patient information. This often left out of the referral and can not be used when making the treatment decision. Based on the above, a design goal was formulated:Enabling easier sharing of contextual patient information between the GP and the OS in the initial referralCreative processA co-evolutionary creative process was used to create a solution. This was heavily influenced by the COVID-19 outbreak, resulting in more validations with the client rather than large stakeholder sessions.CICSThe result is the Contextual Information Communication System (CICS). CICS consists of the Contextual Sharing Tool (CST) and the requirements for its functioning.The CST is a visual tool that enables fast capture and review of contextual patient information by the GP. The GP uses it by setting 5 points for the respective information rubrics along an axis that indicates the significance of that rubric for a patient.This CST gets shared with the orthopedic surgeon, together with the textual referral. It does not provide him with the detailed information, but with an overview of significant information rubrics. The surgeon uses this impression to direct their anamnesis during patient consults. If the consult has not resulted in an explanation of the CST, there is an opportunity to clarify it with the patient’s GP in a conversation. EvaluationEvaluation was done, to validate the design. From this evaluation came that the CICS did indeed meet the design goal.Points of improvement were also identified among which the usability of the current visual design and the need for education on how CICS should be used.Recommendations & Implementation roadmapTo provide the orthopedic center the next steps in CICS development, a recommended implementation roadmap was created. This roadmap shows the steps necessary to reach three defined horizons:The start of a CICS pilotFull CICS implementation in the knee arthrosis trajectoryExpansion of CICS to other care trajectories.

Accenture Interactive, the marketing arm of international consultancy Accenture, has been created to address the evolving needs of their clients in the field of design and technology. As a result, Accenture Interactive now consists of several pillars that together can deliver a meaningful end-to-end experience. Delivering value to the client and the organization in projects by collaborating across pillars are called cross-pillar projects. However, Accenture Interactive encounters that the current collaboration between the different pillars in client projects is not at the level they would like it to be. In line with this observation, the purpose of this thesis was to explore what goes wrong in the current cross-pillar projects, with the aim to reveal the influencing factors of these projects. Therefore, this thesis aimed to improve the cross- pillar performance by defining the definition of cross- pillar working in the context of Accenture Interactive, and resolving the barriers towards the envisioned level of cross-pillar working. As a result, an integrated solution was created, consisting of improvements in existing communication channels and adding a proposition development approach to the existing initiation process. This was examined by conducting twelve in-depth interviews with different pillars, from six completed cross-pillar projects. The interviews defined the context of cross-pillar work in Accenture Interactive and the elements that make up all the studied cross-pillar projects. Then, a deeper look was taken at differences emerged between the performance of the studied projects. This led to the problem statement that the performance of a cross-pillar project is influenced by the presence of awareness and willingness in the initiation of the projects. A deeper study was conducted to determine which barriers are present during initiation preventing awareness and willingness. The design goal, was to develop means and approaches that could help employees to facilitate cross-pillar collaboration during the initiation of new projects. To facilitate implementation, it is proposed that existing activities, like Chapter Zero and Friday morning meetings, could help serve that purpose. The end goal of this approach is to learn to initiate cross-pillar projects by experiencing how to bring value to clients by collaborating between pillars. Furthermore, a roadmap is created to guide Accenture Interactive in bridging the gap between the results of this project and the new practice of cross-pillar working. This roadmap aligns the different development processes within Accenture Interactive, reflects how this thesis’s outcomes fit within the intended timeline, and provides direction to Accenture Interactive’s vision.

The amount of tourists visiting the Dutch flower bulb region is growing every year. The Keukenhof, one of the biggest tourist attractors in the region, already welcomed 1.5 million visitors in the eight week during flowering season in 2019, which is almost twice the visitor count of 10 years ago. Because of this growth, the local population’s day-to-day businesses become increasingly disrupted. The pressure of these disruptions is mostly felt in three sub-contexts: •The flower fields; tourists that trample flower bulbs while making pictures •Regional accessibility; tourists causing traffic congestions which burdens the local population that has to travel to or from Lisse •Retail shops in Lisse; reduced accessibility causing regional shoppers to avoid Lisse, leading to less revenue. The choice has been made to merely focus on the last of these three sub-contexts. Although tourism was found to be a burden for the retail shops of Lisse, quantitative and qualitative research showed not only temporary inaccessibility through tourism threatens the centre of Lisse, but also online shopping, attractiveness of city centres and vacant stores pose a threat. At this moment, the strengths of the centre of Lisse as a regional shopping area can no longer outweigh the pressure that comes with these threats. This causes the centre to slowly degrade, manifesting itself in an increasingly amount of vacancies and shop owners that do not feel motivated to collaborate and invest in the centre any more. To counter this effect of degradation, a transition should to be made where Lisse is no longer regarded as just a regional shopping area, but as a village centre that is rich with experiences and where it pays off to do effort for the centre by taking ownership. The value of ‘the centre’ stands or falls by the amount of stakeholders that feel that they are part of the whole and have a responsibility to that whole. If this is present, ‘the centre’ will provide experiences to the customers and a positive business climate to the shop owners. In this way, the whole becomes more than the sum of the individual parts. For implementation, it is important to put focus on the symbiotic relationship that exists between individual stakeholders and ‘the centre’. For the short term, the benefits of investing in experiences can be demonstrated through pilots in individual stores. Eventually, the long term goal is providing a richness in collaboratively made experiences that bind the whole of the centre together, making current threats insignificant while providing positive spill over effects for the local entrepreneurs and customers. Stakeholders that have a purpose in governing the region such as HLTsamen should take a role in facilitating and orchestrating the transition.

Strategy is used by organizations to adjust to emerging challenges and opportunities in the market environment. Due to a more rapidly changing market caused by globalization, strategy has become increasingly important. Organizations often struggle to implement strategy successfully caused by difficulties with the transition from the strategy formulation phase into the realization phase. Fully involving the employees in this phase appears to be challenging, they are often not properly informed or do not understand the strategy. The main objective of this thesis was to create a holistic and practical solution which improves the realization of strategy by motivating employees to contribute. The solution was designed to be usable by Strategiemakers (the client) as well as by organizations themselves. In order to design the solution, a theoretical research and empirical research were conducted to create an holistic understanding of the strategic process and triangulate insights. In literature three main phases of the strategic process were identified: Strategy forming – Guiding policies – Realization. These phases were specified by researching the strategic process of four highly varying organizations, which uncovered six challenges in the realization phase. From these challenges was decided to focus on the troublesome activity of triggering the employee to contribute to the strategy, since a solution for this lied in the reach of this master thesis. Insight into the perspective of the employee on the strategic realization phase provided knowledge on how to improve their motivation for strategy realization. Three parts of this perspective were researched: the influence of the organizational context the employee functions in, the employees' experience of the strategy and general motivators of the employee. With these insights, a holistic and practical solution was designed to facilitate organizations in triggering their employees to adventure in strategy realization. This solution is based on the idea of enhancing the employees' intrinsic motivation by creating a win-win situation for them and the organization. Through six steps the organization is facilitated in linking the personal development of the employee to the strategic objectives which addresses the intrinsic motivation of the employee. In the designed trajectory, the organization is aided in the specification of their strategy by determining which skills and capabilities are needed for the realization. Next, the employees are guided in the discovery of their desired skills and ambitions. Lastly, the canvas kit facilitates the process of making a connection between the employees' desires in development and the skills required for the realization of the strategy.

The scope of this graduation project was the current organizational design (OD) approach of a service company. The initial assignment was to investigate whether there were opportunities within the current approach to make it more experience and/or user centered. The current approach is used for quite a long time and the assignment was to shine a new perspective on it by using design techniques. Interviews with senior team members were conducted to understand the scope. Out of these interviews it became clear that there were three areas with room for improvement within the current OD approach, namely ‘knowledge management’, ‘approach standardization’ and ‘visualization’. It was decided to chose approach standardization as the focus for the rest of the project. A second round of interviews was performed to answer why, what, and how the approach should be standardized. Out of these interviews the underlying problem came to the surface: due to experience the senior members in the team know what they are doing but they miss the simple tools/documents to bring this across to juniors or people outside the team. This problem has been used as the basis for the design statement of this project, which is: design a tool for the X team that brings overview and gives the team the completeness to express their expertise. Based on the earlier gathered insights the OD toolbox was designed. The toolbox consists of two tools: the OD expertise map and the approach generator. The toolbox was validated with seniors and juniors of the team and seen as valuable. It turned out that the purpose of the OD toolbox is to create a shared understanding among members of the team and in this way synchronization of the different mindsets between the seniors and juniors is facilitated. The tool works as a boundary object because it is used differently by seniors and juniors. The seniors will use the tool as a quick catch up for information and juniors mostly use the tool to understand OD projects.

This graduation project aimed at refining X!Delft’s value proposition and exploring the role of Design Thinking for their organisation. X!Delft is an organisation within the valorisation centre of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), responsible for setting up partnerships with industry in favour of knowledge and technology transfer. X!Delft intends to create an ‘innovation ecosystem’ in which TU Delft, companies, and startups work together on “new inventions” (van Wijnen, 2019). However, stimulating collaboration between multiple companies in such an ecosystem proves to be challenging. Hence, the ecosystem is now predominantly used for company-specific challenges. To encourage working as an ecosystem, it is essential to understand the partners’ needs upon entering a partnership with X!Delft. This enables the creation of a relevant value proposition, describing how X!Delft’s service offering adds value to its partners.A way to incorporate the needs of partners into a relevant value proposition is by means of Design Thinking (DT). DT is a human-centred innovation approach suitable for understanding and providing for people’s and companies (latent) needs (Hooge et al., 2012; Carlgren, 2013). To discover what incentivises companies to opt for a partnership with X!Delft, seventeen semi-structured interviews and three creative sessions were conducted. The research uncovers a shared driver across the industry partners of X!Delft, namely the sense of suspense. Suspense is defined as “a feeling or state of anxious or excited uncertainty about what may happen” (Oxford University Press , 2019). It complements literature’s description of ‘uncertainty’, by adding a factor of excitement and wonder, triggering an impulse to act. (Lehne & Koelsch, 2015). In order to understand how to manage suspense, the pragmatist inquiry proved to be useful (Lorino, 2018). In this inquiry, one moves from an uncertain situation towards a future ‘belief’, by combining experimentation and reasoning. Similarly, design practices are beneficial to coming up with future-focused solutions when considering situations of uncertainty or ambiguity.This resulted in the proposal of a new approach, PACES. The approach structures and expands X!Delft’s services so they “Preserve And Cultivate Effective Suspense”. This ‘effective suspense’, which incentivises engagement in a learning process, is cultivated in six phases: perceiving, perspective, predicting, paraphrasing, probing and proving. PACES stimulates collecting information continuously (perceiving) and sharing insights, increasing the collective knowledge base (perspective) to generate plausible predictions. These are then made actionable (paraphrasing) based on the strategic intent of individual actors, ensuring company-specific impact through the development of experiments (probing) followed by implementation projects (proving). A first ideation step is performed to translate PACES into services, complementing X!Delft’s current service offering. These services aim to incentivise participation in shared knowledge creation, hence enhancing collaboration in the innovation ecosystem. It is suggested to implement these shared services gradually - first stimulating collaboration in the first phases, and slowly moving to the last phases, where most of the knowledge creation takes place. In conclusion, some direction for future research and further development of PACES are given.

This thesis answers the question: “How can we generate and maximise value from technologies that sit in the periphery of the technology development ecosystem?”. The launchpad innovation strategy provides the solution. A technology in the periphery of the development eco-system fell out of development after changes to the technology strategy. The project owner remained adamant that there was value to the product if licensed. The goal was to create value, and the product was developed to create as much value as possible to its users. But rather than designing a product to create value for the user, turning those roles around provided an interesting perspective. By designing a strategy to create value for the company from this type of technology product an interesting strategy was designed. The strategy’s aim is to create as much value as possible, but rather than focus on revenue, it looks at what technology can create that creates long term benefits. The strategy revolves around creating a type of company that sits between a corporate startup and a spinout with the purpose of commercialising the technology. The companies are autonomous but have close contacts to the mother company allowing for the exchange of money, information, people and most important knowledge. This is the launchpad strategy.

As the B2B environment of the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry is changing more rapidly than ever, Exact needs to constantly adapt to these changes and accommodate to the increasingly complex needs and wishes of their customers. Designing a good customer experience is vital in ensuring a sustainable competitive advantage for Exact. In order for Exact to try to adapt to this change in environment, a shift towards customer centric initiatives showed over the past years within its organisation. Among these initiatives is the creation of a Customer Journey Management (CJM) team, about half a year ago, within the Customer Success department of Exact. Their aim is to improve customer satisfaction and reduce churn, by optimising the customer experience of Exact solutions. This project was initiated by the CJM team which asked: “How can Exact bring Customer Journey Management to the next level of maturity?” As CJM is slowly getting up and running, many quick wins can still be achieved in the Post-Sales process they are currently responsible for. It is debatable, however, whether this is the right approach for the long term, whether they have the right influence to make the desired impact and whether the metrics they are being held accountable for are fitting for its ultimate goal: the optimisation of Exacts end-to-end customer journey. In order to reach this goal, close collaboration between different departments is necessary, by empowering them to positively contribute to their part of the customer journey in an integrated way. This can only be achieved through a shared deep understanding of the customer and their journey and if the value of customer journey management is proven for all stakeholders involved. Ultimately, electing a board member responsible for Exacts customer experience in the form of a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) would be advised. The challenges that the CJM team face, identified in analysis, all seem to point towards the conclusion that user-centered design thinking is not embedded (enough) into the veins of the company. This does not mean that it’s employees do not have the customer at heart though, but it seems that often the customer is not understood well enough and thus mistakes are more easily made. In practise this approach seems harm the customer experience, hurting revenues in the long run. As long as the customer experience is not understood deeply enough by employees, Customer Journey Management does not have the means to impact the customer journey end-to-end, as recommended by literature to bring CJM to the next level. Therefore it was chosen to design a system that enables Exact employees to gain a deeper understanding of their customers. The solution was found in the design of a Game Development Guide. It enables the CJM team (and other employees) to simulate the customers experience through playing games. It is a step-by-step guide for its development and provides the process and tools necessary to design, play and evaluate the games based on different customer experiences. Once the game is ready to be played it can stimulate participatory learning by having employees temporarily step into the customers shoes. This creates deeper (richer) understanding of the customer’s perspective, including his/her (tacit and latent) needs, emotions and contextual factors. The resulting deep customer insights can then be used throughout the innovation process to validate assumptions and prioritize solutions, which results in improved Customer Journey Management. This way Exact will be able to better understand their customers, enabling them to design user-centered solutions that truly benefit their customers experiences. This will ensure that Exact will stay on top, giving them a sustainable competitive advantage over their competitors in the long run.

Within the Dutch Ministries, implementing agencies receive the request to execute specific policies. To do this, they often need a (technical) product/service/platform which enables them to fulfill their job. With new types of technology coming to the market, the implementing agencies explore these new options to see if and how they can add value to their organization and make, e.g., executing a policy easier or more reliable. Therefore, the implementing agencies engage themselves in innovation projects. DICTU supports the implementing agencies with IT solutions such that they can create the product/service/platform to execute the policy. Currently, the innovation process in this context runs across multiple organizations and several departments, and there is little consideration of the various stakeholders; there often is a delay, the final product does not always solve the initial problem, or it occurs that the final product is not (correctly) implemented in the organization. This dissection of the innovation process leaves it broken and unwholly. This graduation project aims to create a designerly interaction between DICTU and its client to positively influence and contribute to a more successful implementation of innovation. Through literature and field research, a schematic overview of the current innovation process is created in which the various stakeholders and interactions are displayed. The two most important findings are that the implementing agencies have little trust for DICTU and that there is no moment in the innovation process where all stakeholders come together. From a design point of view, there is value in involving the different stakeholders throughout the project to create a good solution for an existing problem by synchronizing the various parties. For this purpose, the Zegiswijzer is created. It is a tool that helps structure an additional interaction on the interface between DICTU and their client to make a smooth transition between the different organizations to synchronize their languages. This is done in a workshop by (1) defining the problem and the relevant stakeholders and their connections and by stating the ambition (2) by defining success and illustrating the solution. The next step is to reflect (3) on the first two steps, is the problem definition still accurate? Does the proposed solution indeed solve the problem? Or is it necessary to reframe the problem and/or solution? After this reflection, the path (4) is defined to go from problem to solution and state the expected risks and needed resources. With this step, not only the start of the project and the go-live of the product are considered, but also the phase after the go-live. What is needed to implement the product? And how will the organization adopt the product? Then, a collaborative decision (5) on how to continue is made. Based on the combined perspectives of the stakeholders, a well-informed decision can be made on whether to accept the project, adjust it, or don’t accept the project. The implementation and development of the Zegiswijzer is captured in a roadmap. A future is envisioned in which valuable products/services are created, developed, delivered, and implemented in the Ministry of EZK/LNV by organizing the projects around close inter- and intra-organizational collaboration to create a profound understanding of the context facilitated by DICTU makes use of the Zegiswijzer. This future is realized by first using the Zegiswijzer on the interface between DICTU and its client to challenge the status quo of silo working. Then, DICTU should proactively engage in activities to create a profound understanding of the client’s business and gain legitimacy and trust for their position. The last step is for DICTU to take the role of partner, which leads to the realization of the vision. Future research should investigate the effect of following this designerly interaction on the interface between DICTU and the client and the implications it has on the implementation.

This research addresses how Ricanau Mofo, a low-lying village in Surinam, can become a more water-adaptive and sustainable village, while it faces land erosion, river bank erosion, changing rainfall patterns and sea level rise. It is urgent to intervene, as these issues are expected to increase in occurrence due to climate change. Constraints and limitations that are important to take into account are cultural preservation, maintaining accessibility to the Cottica River, the limited availability of financial resources and the need for a low-maintenance intervention. Three strategies are proposed. The first focuses on addressing land erosion. Planting vegetation on critically eroding areas is a short term measure, while the long-term involves constructing footpaths with drainage channels. This not only mitigates soil erosion, but also regulates water and is relatively cost efficient. The second strategy targets the river bank erosion, which includes wooden bulkheads with vegetation and stones for short term implementation. For the long term, a river bank protection system with groynes is designed, to break waves, slow down the stream velocity and in time causes land gain. As the long term plans require external financial aid, a business case is set up and shared with the captain of Ricanau Mofo, STEORR, the District Commissioner and the Ministry of Public Works. The third strategy addresses water damage in the urban environment. Short-term it consists of providing building guidelines of where to build more water adaptive, and how. This is placed on an informational board in the village. The long-term contains a flood early warning system and recommended equipment. This project's significance lies in identifying interventions that are effective against erosion and water damage while being locally implementable in the rural areas of Surinam. It can be seen as a pilot project that is scalable to other villages along the Cottica River or in the whole of Surinam. However, there are limitations to the project. The most important is the lack of data quantity and data quality. This caused implications for dimensioning the interventions and their financial impact. Another limitation is that the project does not create ‘dry feet’ for the village; it creates a way of mitigating water damage while living next to the Cottica River. In addition, there is a limitation in the financing of follow-up projects. Therefore, a business case is also being delivered to the Ministry of Public Works, the District Commissioner of Marowijne South-West and the captain of Ricanau Mofo. They can use it to apply for funds from international organisations and include it in future policy plans. To summarise, Ricanau Mofo can become more water adaptive by regulating how to build and where, by continuing the prototype of the bulkheads by planting more vegetation and, by requesting financial aid for the river bank protection long term. As Figure 0.2 shows, it not only contributes as a report, but also in a tangible form of a prototype and in educational information boards in the local language to enhance the continuity and help the village.

This thesis takes the perspective that ‘a design approach’ might help to better understand and educate the business proposition development in new high-tech ventures. This has been observed at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, where design students (without an entrepreneurial education) start their new high-tech ventures. Furthermore, there are some implications in literature suggest that design improves entrepreneurship education. However, it is unknown what this design approach exactly is, and how and why it is helpful. This thesis will explore these questions.@en