This is the outcome of our project AVITAE

1. AVITA INNOVATION, BRANDING
AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP MODEL
- A TUTORIAL
The AVITAE TEAM 2015
2015

2. Notice
All the pictures, text and more are produced by the AVITAE-team.
The team cannot in any way be held responsible for any kind of damages in relation to using
the model or the products developed.
Copyright and legal STUFF

3. Introduction
Welcome to this tutorial on the AVITAE Innovation- and Entrepreneurship
model for teachers. The model was developed in the auspecies of the
European AVITAE-project and relies on ideas, methods and techniques of the
INDEX/ Designtoimprovelife-education-model and student-centeret,
problem-based projectwork. See Signe Holm Larsens documents for more
about this or on the Designtoimprovelife Education webpage.
Educational platform
The model is meant to bridge the gap between the past, the present and the
future with innovation, branding and entrepreneurship in order to generate
solution and ideas to new products and markets.
The model is based on the following educational principles.
• Problem-based project-oriented work
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4. • Interdependent team work, sum-ups and feedback
• Creative work
• Active and authentic learning; working with real-world problems.
Phases and evaluation
Each phase ends with a sum-up-phase ( build in evaluation structure, to ensure the
cohesion of the work), where the students sum up the work done so far: what is
accomplished and what needs to be done. This is outlined on a sum-up poster and then
presented to other groups, who can give feedback. The poster-work and the sum-ups link
the phases in the model.
The tutorial
• Start with this introduction
• Continue with the video here.
• Work through the phases.
• Questions, please mail the author.
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5. Bridging the gap
The basic idea behind the AVITAE innovation, branding and entrepreneurship model is how to
bridge the gap between the past and the present in order to generate ideas and solutions to
current problems, inspired by former solutions. Furthermore to use these ideas to generate
companies and new products.
In order to use or get inspired by e.g. the wiking’s way of crossing the Russian rivers, the ideas of
Plato or the way tar was produced and used for preserving lines, the students need a solid
knowledge about all these things, concepts, persons and myths. They also need to know about
what is creativity, innovation, branding and entrepreneurship
Learning goals
To be able to differentiate between creativity and innovation.
What is innovation?
A prerequisite for making innovative solutions is to have an idea about what is the difference
between creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Make the students discuss these concept as an introduction to the work with design of innovative
solutions to problems.
A simple way to define these concepts is as follows.
IDEAS TO INNOVATION WARMING UP
EXERCISES
❖ See the “IDEO - The deep dive” video
❖ See Herman Konings video fra TedXLeuven
❖ Discus, what is innovation and how can the concept be
qualified?
❖ Discus what does entrepreneurship mean to the
students?
❖
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SEKTION 1
Warm-Up/kick off

6. We understand creativity as being the divergent proces where you develop lots of new ideas.
Innovation is like creativity, but convergent. You develop lots of new and useful ideas, but
directed to the solution of a problem.
Entrepreneurship. You innovate with the purpose of making your own company and
capitalise on it. A new concept is intrapreneurship, meaning, that you develop innovative and
solution-based ideas, but in an existing company or organisation, not in you own company.
Concepts about innovation
It may also be a good thing to discuss the following ways to characterise innovation with the
students (I.-III). Let the students find examples of local and global innovations and products
and ask them to use the concepts in the presentations of sum-ups. Let the students use these
concepts.
I. Local / Global
Global innovations are solutions which are new and innovative for the entire planet. These
kinds of innovations are of course very difficult to develop. Local innovation is far easier.
Local innovations are solutions with a local scope. It can be to use existing technologies and
solutions to solve local problems. For instance, bicycle lanes may not be a new innovation,
but used in a particular local setting, it may be a life saving innovation.
Radical/ incremental
Radical innovation means developing brand new products and solutions, never seen before
meeting completely new users’ needs. Again this is difficult. Incremental innovation is far
easier using an existing innovation and just refining is a bit more.
Questions, projects and problems
Before the students can design solutions to real world problems using methods from innovation
and entrepreneurship, it may be a good thing to discus the difference between a question, a
problem and a project.
One way to understand/define these concepts could be as follows:
Questions are obvious for students. Questions may have simple answers, but problems are
more complex than questions. Projects are more complex than problems and needs carefull
studies and use of methods. Project are real-world problems, which calls for solutions and have
a target groups, in need for the solutions.
Domain knowledge
As we will cover in the next section, it is of crucial importance that the students exploit their
domain knowlege in the innovation processes.
Therefore, it is be a good thing to underline this before the innovative processes. A lot of
methods can be used there, for instance brainstorming, note-taking, small group-presentations
and similar methods.
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7. 2. OPEN SPACE: From themes to problem-definition
Introduction.
The first phase relates to finding a problem to work with.
Open Space is a method for getting from themes and ideas to concrete problems in a very
student-centeret (and active) way. The students will have to work actively and form design teams
which will work with the problems defined.
Learning goals
To get from ideas to problem defintions.
How to
1. Write keywords, concepts and sentenses on pieces of paper, one on each paper. It can also be
chunks of text, famous quotes, pictures, comics or excerpts from newspaper-headlines.
2. Spread the cards on the floor. Let the students move around for some time and examine
the cards. They are not allowed to speak. When they have investigated the concepts and
words on the cards, let the students collect the cards in heaps they would like to work with
and which they think could form the basis for a project.
3. The students must place themselves on the heap of cards, they would like to work with,
PREPARE WARMING UP EXERCISES
❖ Make cards with key concepts word, persons, methods
❖ Spread them out on the floor
❖ Make the students collect cards they think could form a
problem, they would like to work with.
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SEKTION 2
Phase 1: Prepare, Open
Space and Sum-Ups

8. thus forming a design-team.
4. Afterwards, students must try to define a problem out of the cards they collected.
5. Sum-up. In this phase, the students present what the have worked out on a poster and
present to other groups and gets feedback. Also the teachers must accept the problems
defined and give feedback.
Scaffolding OS-processes.
Based on the experiences of using the model, it is a good thing to give the students quite
strickt deadlines.
The cards with words can be done by the teacher or by the students - or the teacher can do
some and the students can add some, in order to engage the students in the work of
problem-defintion.
In principle any curriculum could be the point of departure of an Open Space activity, but
in order to bridge the gap between past and present half of the card should be coining
former problem-domaing, former groups and the rest new user groups new problem
domains.
• In order to base the innovative work on a solid subject-related matter, it is of
course important, that the word and concepts of the cards are something, that the students
have lots of knowledge about or acces to materials they can study.
• When students place the cards in
heaps, they might want a card in a
different heap - but they are not
allowed to discuss. In this situation, the
teacher can copy a card.
• It may be a good idea also
to let students make cards with ideas,
but it is important, that these concepts
reside in the problem-domain,
otherwise a project-work about end up
with problems which are quite
irrelevant - also try to avoid that the
students can work with themselves as
target groups.
• Students need a nice combination of different words/concepts to define good
problems. For instance, if they only collect nouns, it is difficult to define a problem. They
need possibly a place, a period in time, groups of people, potential problem-areas etc. One
solution to this can be to mark the card with colored dots, red=a place, blue= a period;
green= a problem area etc., and then instruct the students that they must have at least one
of each color in their heaps.
• If students cannot define problems out of the cards, they got, teachers must supervise
them. One way to do this is of course to discuss with them, bring in subject-related
knowledge, make them study or another to add a card (which the teacher makes),
removing a card, change a card and thus narrowing or opening the problem-area.
Sum-up and feedback/feedforward processes.
It is important, that after all phases the groups meet, present the result of their work and
give feedback and feed-forward to the other groups.
We emphasize that it is feed-forward, not an evaluation or exam. It is crucial that these
processes are quick and directed to what can be improved in next phase.
Post-it-labels can be a good and very short way to give feedback, only writing a few
keywords and placing them on the sum-up-poster.
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9. 8

10. Introduction
It is very important to relate problems to target group needs in order to narrow the scope of the
problems and make sure that the designed solution meet the users’ needs.
One easy way to do this is Personas. Personas is really an imaginary but realistic poster about a
target user. On this poster, you can write a name, interests, age, sex, education, favorite
holiday-places and more and also make a drawing of the user.
The idea is to refer to this user by name when discusing the solutions. If you find it appropriate,
you can make more than one persona, for instance a man and a woman.
The model consists of various methods. You can use methods which suit the same needs, e.g.
instead of Personas, you can use other methods of gaining knowledge about the users needs.
INNOVATION WARMING UP EXERCISES
❖ See the clip about the Shopping Cart
❖ See Herman Konings-clip on TEDX LUEVEN
❖ Discus, what innovation is.
❖ Discuss what entrepreneurship means to the students?
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SEKTION 3
Phase 2: Understanding
target groups

11. If the students learn more about the user, by statistics, questionaires or the like, the personas
can be detailed or modified.
How to
1. Use one large piece of paper per persona.
2. Let the students make a hand-drawn picture of the prototypical memeber of the target
group.
3. Make the students make a detailed story about this persona and let them write important
key points on the poster, e.g. name, job, education, preferences etc.
4. Now let the students in groups present their person an get feedback from the others and
also presents how this user/persona will relate to the problem defined.
For instance
"Mr. Jones is 45 years old mechanic. His IT-skills is on a basic user level and when he find
holidays, he uses only…."
Scaffolding the target groups analysis
• Having a poster from ealier can be a nice way to present the idea.
• Listen to the stories, when students present, give feedback
• Emphasise, that the personas must be realistic and relevant
• Make sure, that the students use their personas in order to relate to the problems defined.
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12. Introduction
In the mockup or prototyping session mock-up, prototypes of solutions for the target groups are
built.
How to
• Provide lot of materials, tools,
molding clay, paint, cardboard-boxes,
tape and glue, tools like scissors and
knifes, straws, ballons and other
things, which can be used to make
models of innovative solutions to the
problems.
• Set the time with deadline, for
instance 1 hour for building
• Stop the processes and let the
students make sum-up poster of what they have achieved and what they are lacking. They must
answer: Why is this a solution for the target group?
Scaffolding OS-processes.
• Ask the students why this is innovative and why it solves problems for the identified user group.
• Ask them to reflect on the previous phases.
PREPARING FOR MOCKUP-PROCESSES
❖ Provide access to materiales and tools.
(Find a nice place to work)
❖ Ask the students to bring boxes etc. from home
❖ If knives for cutting cardbord etc. are used, paint , -
remember to bring some cans, water and protection for
the tables.
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SEKTION 4
Prototyping solution /
Mock-ups

13. • Make them reflect on, wheather this is an illustration of the problem OR a mockup for a
solution.
• Try to make them characterise their innovation using the concepts of local/global and
radical/incremental innovation.
• Sometimes groups are making models with quite low degree of innovation. Try to get the
students out of their “comfort zone”, giving them ideas to make more radical innovations.
• If a group cannot find out what to build, ask them to narrow the problem or the target
group/persona.
• The internet supplies lots of tools, but in order to make the students communicate and
actually build and work with the solutions, it is better not to use the Internet too much.
Sometimes it is necessary to study in order to learn more about the problem domain, but
this is done in earlier phases.
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14. Introduction
Branding is the proces of adding stories and extra values to a
product. After mockup-phase a possible solution to your
problem, develop an elevator pitch for your solution -brand it!
The elevator pitch was originally a short speech, meant to
convince an investor (in an elevator between two meetings), that
s/he should invest money in a product. Convince, persuade,
brand, commercialise - this is your once-in-a-lifetime option to
get funding to realise the product of your LIFE!
How to
Start with why this product is relevant, becasuse _. User will like
it, because , instead of the competitors, becasuse . Its solves a
real world problem, namely _
BRANDING WARMING UP EXERCISES
❖ The elevator pitch
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SEKTION 5
Branding