Embedding Changemaker Skills and Social Innovation into Design Student Learning

Building on entrepreneurship education and the United Kingdom (UK) government review on creativity in business, this paper discusses a case study of a funded project to develop design students' future skills by collaborating on transitioning student projects into start-up venture and commercialisation for the common good. Undergraduate students are shown to gain insights from different faculties and each other’s subject expertise using a variety of set activities throughout the academic year to challenge and support them. The learning for students included scheduled workshops with the possibility of new venture creation based on the new product development (NPD) methodology, student networking and applying their soft skills in a new context. Four workshop tasks (Enterprise, innovation and you, enterprise development, prototyping and venture articulation) were developed for this project and visualised in a route map. The collaboration of product design students with entrepreneurship students has been observed at the commencement stage, during and after the experience to understand their personal development and identify key learnings captured through opinion polls, focus groups and observation. Triangulation resulted through focus group and feedback from wider project team and academics reflecting on learning models in design/engineering versus entrepreneurship/business. This project is timely due to its year-long inter-faculty student experience during a pandemic using and developing ‘changemaker’ competencies and social innovation.