As a Junior Innovation Architect, I worked within the Innovation Lab which is responsible for the generation of new start-up ideas and the development of early-stage venture projects. More specifically, I supported the team in tasks along the innovation process, including: researching sub-sectors to identify customer problems, helping organise “ideation” workshops, as well as worked on early stage projects completing tasks like market sizing, business model development, user research, and hypothesis testing.
Some DE skills I used on my placement include: development of pricing models and business models (I used the knowledge of business model canvases from Innovation & Entrepreneurship); hypothesis testing for a venture idea (covered in I&E); user interviews (skills learnt in HCDE); idea generation techniques (leant in Intro to DE, HCDE); and broadly, teamworking skills from all the group projects in DE.
A key achievement included working on a problem-solution-fit phase project in the private care sector. I worked on the business model plus quantitative and qualitive research to prove key problem and solution hypotheses. These were proven, validating the idea, and pitching the project to the management board was a success, resulting in it progressing to the next phase. This meant the project was closer to launching as a full startup.
