NESTA workshop: Book 01/Book02

For today's NESTA workshop I had to read Book 01- ''Arrivals and Destinations'' and Book 02- ''Getting off the ground'' of the NESTA programme to equip me for the exercises involved.

In reading these books I was able to gain greater insight into what the NESTA programme actually involved.  The arrivals section in Book 01 explains how the programme will act as a framework to explore my idea.  The guide plans to answer the following questions:

• What should I do to make my business work?
• Why should my customers care and how will they benefit?
• How can I make money to allow my business to be sustainable?

In realising a business idea we need to take risks, solve problems and make ideas happen.

The following quotation is what business is all about:

''Spotting opportunities, creating new ideas and having the confidence and capabilities to turn these ideas into working realities''

-Nixon (2004)

In the workshop I participated in 4 tasks:

1. Identifying Values
2. Evidence Modelling
3. Fake Evidence
4. SWOT Analysis

Each task is designed to help develop a range of models to explore different aspects of a business idea to better understand, describe and predict how it could work.  It helps explore what a business idea offers, who it is offered to and how you can engage those people and earn money for your business.

Worksheet 02a: Your values

In this exercise I was asked to work alone so I could capture and organise my personal values.  We had to think of the values as the things that make us feel truly alive and passionately committed.

I placed my values into 4 separate columns:

• always important
• sometimes important
• rarely important
• never important

In doing this exercise I was able to identify 5 values that are always important to me and therefore would feature in any business venture I wish to develop.

The exercise also taught me that I recognise a need for every value -hence why I didn't place any value in the 'never important' column.

Worksheet 02b: Evidence Modelling

This exercise helped to consider what impacts a business would have on the world if it was successful.

I chose to carry out this exercise based on a Collaborative Design Space for design graduates.

This exercise allowed me to prove the viability of my idea by forcing me to identify how it would enhance, replace and revive any current organisation/idea.

Exercise: Fake Evidence

This exercise allowed us to be creative.  Once we had imagined the future of a potential business, the next step was to construct evidence of its success.

I decided to create a website visual of my business idea illustrating how 10 design disciplines could collaborate.

The idea is that all 10 design disciplines collaborate to create a sense of community and provide a network of expertise within the space.

Exercise: SWOT Analysis

After exploring what my business might look like, I carried out a SWOT analysis to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of my idea.

In doing this exercise I was able to think about how I could turn potential weaknesses into strengths, and threats into opportunities.

I look forward to the workshop next week were we will focusing on Book 03 of the NESTA programme- ''Choosing your path.''  The book promises to focus on what we need to make a business work.