This dissertation was prompted by its author’s amazement that only a handful of financial experts had read the arrival of the 2009 recession in the subprime mortgage problems in the American housing market. Despite hefty confrontations in the media between investment experts during the years leading up to the recession, it took the fall of Lehmann Brothers for the world to become aware of the effects of the subprime crisis. Such myopia is exemplary for weak signals: the strategic phenomena detected in the environment or created during interpretation, that are distant to the perceiving top-manager’s frame of reference. If top-managers perceive weak signals early enough and interpret them accurately, they can increase the resilience of their company. If they don’t, their companies run high risks. In the case of the great recession, the correct perceiving top-managers betted against mortgage-backed securities, and the rest had to take drastic measures to survive a double-dip recession. Whether or not having insights into the effective perception of weak signals can make or break companies...

There seems to be a shift in gender stereotypes in general. Concerning school subjects, there are also gender role stereotypes for boys and girls. Boys seem to be more interested in mathematics and natural sciences whereas girls seem to be more motivated for language, arts and writing (Jacobs, 2002). According to the attribution theory (Heider, 1958), the performance of an individual can be attributed to the person themselves (internal) or to the situation in which they are in (external). There might be a link between these existing stereotypes in school subjects and level of self-confidence of boys and girls.
Strategic design tasks entail aspects of business, engineering and design. Therefore, it entails aspects of both stereotypical boys (mathematics, natural sciences) and girls (language, arts, writing) school subjects. It would thus be worth knowing whether there are also gender differences in attribution when dealing with a strategic design task. The goal of this research is to find out how the attribution theory applies for boys and girls when performing a strategic design task. The main research question is:
How does attribution theory apply for boys and girls when performing a strategic design task? In order to answer the main research question, thirteen sub research questions with corresponding hypotheses were formulated. The research consisted of both quantitative and qualitative research methods. A sample of 46 third year high school students was used. The participants were divided in gender equal teams of three. The participants performed a strategic design task as a team. Three questionnaires were conducted among the participants; one before, one after and finally, one after grading the strategic design task. At the end of the research interviews were held to give the quantitative data more body. The data analysis mainly consisted of statistically analysing the effects of independent variables on dependent variables. The dependent variables of this research, in general, are type of attribution, self-confidence and interest (and performance). The independent variable is gender. The moderators are the strategic design task and grading. To create more overview, the results are documented in six variable themes. The results of this research suggest that stereotypes do not exist within this group of participants. Interest and performance in school subjects contradicted the existing gender stereotypes. Furthermore, no differences in interest in the strategic design task were found. Boys and girls both scored high on self-confidence in each measurement, no significant differences were found here. In line with this high self-confidence, both boys and girls attributed success to internal factors and were highly self-confident about performing a strategic design task in the future. This report concludes with a discussion of the results, limitations and recommendations for future research on the subject.

Mind-sets play an important role in orienting the decisions and activities that an individual engages in when he or she is designing, and designing involves interaction with complex, open-ended and ambiguous situations. This means that the individual disposition of a person influences the way that he or she reacts, and in designing, the complexity of the conditions that the individual interacts with, can increase due to the nature of the design problems. The processes that an individual engages in while designing is in turn, expected to influence the quality of design solutions that he or she produces.

This thesis focusses on investigating the phenomena of mind-sets in the context of design and design learning, and its effects on the process of designing and quality of design solutions. Prevalent mind-sets that design students have toward design learning are identified and examined. Two categories of mind-sets are proposed, validated and tested across three different empirical studies. The two categories of mind-sets include the discerning and opportunistic mind-sets. Distinct differences between the two mind-sets provide significant insights toward the effects of mind-sets on the process and quality of outcomes in designing. Findings from these studies carry implications and recommendations for design education.

Years after the peak of the Global Financial Crisis, Europe as a theatre of business remains exposed to considerable pressures from uncertainties in the development of national economies. One key element to sustainable success in corporate venturing is the capacity of enterprises to sense and seize an opportunity to grow value through investment in innovation before market logics have been proven elsewhere. While improving innovative performance in terms of launching novel and commercially successful products and services remains the imperative aim of sustainable business venturing, history has taught us time and again that a substantial product innovation will be picked up and replicated by competitors very quickly, posing stark challenges to companies to repeat the innovation cycle quickly following the launch of a novel product. (Massa & Tucci, 2013; Casprini, 2015). This thesis reports on the underlying premises that BMI is appropriate for fostering sustainable competitive advantage of businesses. Furthermore, the benefits and influences of abductive reasoning on leading managers’ decision making and reasoning during the process of BMI to create superior strategies and appendant corporate success are demonstrated in this thesis. Prior research at the University of Sydney, has shown the potential of novel forms of logical reasoning, in particular abductive reasoning, which is often considered as the kernel of innovative/creative design practice, Design Thinking (or ‘designerly ways of thinking’ more general), to support decision making in product innovation management (Dong et al., 2015; Mounarath et al., 2011). Cognitive strategies related to abductive reasoning, such as creativity, analogizing, mental simulation as well as well as pre-factual thought (Epstude et al., 2016; Dong et al., 2016; Ball and Christensen, 2009; Gavetti et al., 2005), have further been linked to success of entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial endeavours (Huang & Pearce, 2015). After extensive literature research, it was determined that on paper, product innovation processes are very similar to BMI processes. Furthermore, it has been stated by Teece (2007) that a business model itself is a hypothesis about what customers want and how a company should confirm these needs and be paid for them. This suggests that the principles of abductive reasoning and generative sensing may similarly apply to business model innovation. This is to be examined during the empirical research. This empirical research, employed the semi-structured interview approach in which 15 leading top-managers were interviewed. In BMI visioning and strategizing is key and is therefore predestined to come from higher hierarchical levels in an organization, whereas PI is mainly promoted by individual designers, engineers etc. in a rather bottom-up process. This research specifically aims to find information about the decision process, the (logical) reasoning process of executives within the BMI process. The results presented in this thesis are derived from in-depth conversations with 15 experts on the topic of business model innovation. Within these conversations their approaches and motivations during the business model innovation process were discussed. The research goal was to find out if managers use instances of abductive reasoning during the BMI process and what the effect of this reasoning is on successful business venturing. The results of the empirical research show that most cases of successful BMI that were heard seem to involve some form of abductive reasoning and/or generative sensing mechanisms. Hence, there is a good likelihood of this being applicable on a broader basis. Therefore, it is likely that there is a correlation between abductive reasoning and successful business venturing, not only owing to a more future-oriented mindset and the prediction of a future outcome scenario but even more because often it creates a certain timespan and plausible path into this future outcome scenario and/or future end goal or end value. Rather than just future or divergent thinking, it helps managers to create plausible explanations for certain observations and formed hypothesis. In line with these results, the one example in which abductive reasoning was present during the BMI process but did not lead to ultimate success reveals sustentation for the positive effect of abductive reasoning during the BMI process. After all, any support in business venturing can make a difference between success and failure. Based on the experiences of the interviewed executives, business leaders should make an effort to advance their cognitive capabilities to envision future opportunities by doing extensive market research, investigating trends and understanding customer needs and wants. Managers should be well aware that the use of iteration and reframing during the BMI process is key for a successful outcome. Moreover, managers should use forecasting methods such as creating business cases, examining trends and contextual research for example in other domains and to mentally forecast and simulate plausible paths to predict future outcomes and opportunities. Managers should train themselves into adopting a mindset like this, train themselves in this business model innovation process as it can lead them to grasp opportunities better. This could be done by searching for inspiration and information in other domains, where managers or entrepreneurs might have or might not have prior knowledge (Fiet, 2007; Guenther et al., 2017), to find new opportunities. Furthermore, to become successful at business model innovation, it is important for managers to use be open to experimenting, questioning the status-quo and easily recognize patterns (Dyer et al.,2008). Especially pattern recognition shows similar cognitive processes to those used in creative thinking (Weisberg, 1999; Welling 2007) and is often linked to counterfactual thinking (Gaglio, 2004). In conclusion, the results of this present investigation suggest that there is a correlation between abductive reasoning and successful business venturing. Combined with the findings from the present investigation, managers should use creative capabilities such as abductive reasoning and generative sensing during the business model innovation process in order to become successful at both the ideation and the implementation of a new business model. Managers should train themselves into adopting a mindset like this, train themselves in this business model innovation process as it can lead them to grasp opportunities better. However, there is no definite set of capabilities or specific reasoning process which managers should ubiquitously adopt, this research suggests that when applying abductive reasoning logic and using instances of generative sensing during business model innovation, it is highly likely that this will have a positive effect on the final outcome of a business model.