Entrepreneurial design: the role of design as driver of entrepreneurial opportunity generation and assessment

The discovery (or creation) of entrepreneurial opportunities is a crucial starting point of the entrepreneurial process, yet, the process remains casual and sloppy. There are many similarities between the front-end of the new product development process and the front-end of the entrepreneurial process. Although many authors acknowledge creativity as an important factor in the generation of entrepreneurial opportunities, none of them acknowledges any contribution from design. When creative capabilities are used at the front-end of innovation, aspiring entrepreneurs can be more productive because design approaches enable entrepreneurs to be pro-active, consistent and reliable, rather than just exploratory and reactive. Design, especially service design, possesses instruments that allow for the framing, development, co-designing and prototyping of complex intangible projects thus potentially being a powerful ally to entrepreneurs. The purpose of this article is to postulate the use of a set of service design tools as creative capabilities for empowering aspiring entrepreneurs in the front-end of the entrepreneurial process to frame, create, develop and assess business ideas, potentially turning them into entrepreneurial opportunities and posit the use of design strategies and instruments in the front-end of the entrepreneurial process.