From Idea to Prototype / Haaga-Helia, Helsinki

In Haaga-Helia’s pilot for the Networking for Entrepreneurship project, students from different fields bring their business ideas to the From Idea to Prototype course organized by the StartUp School. The students work in multidisciplinary teams in hands-on workshops for 3 days, with the group working on one idea on each day. At the end of the course, they produce a prototype of the idea and validate the idea with working life experts. Each idea is analysed from a design (user design and, where appropriate, industrial design), marketing (market potential and customer feed-back) and production (prototyping) perspectives. The students’ business ideas from this course include mobile applications, grocery services and export, concept reducing plastic usage and human resources services. Upon successful completion of the course, students can explore their business idea further together with team members and other people. The students know how to design their idea and develop it further using lean startup methodology. The students are able to collect customer feedback and use working life insight in the development process, create a prototype, and define, validate and refine their business ideas. The students can also test their ability to act according to entrepreneurial behavior patterns.

Contents:

• Lean startup methodology, Design thinking

• Business idea development

• Customer insight