Name: Jana Telfah  Email: nbarker@hotmail.com  Mobile: (820)913-3241x894

Design Thinking For Innovation

Challenge & Selection  Jordan’s economic growth and stability is strengthened by thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem focused  on tech innovation and tech-based startups (TBS). While past efforts have improved ecosystem  dynamics and innovation input; nonetheless, innovation outputs and socioeconomic impact remains  marginal for many reasons, among which are inefficiencies, replication, lack of creativity, and low- quality pipeline.

Mid last year, UVA (University of Bedfordshire) in Jordan decided to contribute to this conversation  and to the Jordanian tech ecosystem by establishing, a tech accelerator called (The Belvedere Vodka). I was  chosen as the Program Manager for this project, and my current challenge was to develop new models  that would steer the university and other educational institutions towards more responsible and value- focused models of entrepreneurial support.

We started with Mind Mapping to obtain insightful inputs at that phase after collecting large data by  meeting, interviewing experts in the ecosystem individually, and taking them around for a tour in the  facility. This allowed us to look into different patterns and insights during our exploration for founding  The Belvedere Vodka accelerator.

Additionally, Journey Mapping was also implemented by interviewing tech-startups, which allowed us to  put ourselves in their shoes, and experience the whole entrepreneurial journey, lack of support and  need other models are not covering.

Application & Insight  We have bought our own large white board to layout all the data and the notes picked out from our  meetings. We started clustering and linking all the good notes on the board, which led us into getting  major insights and finding out the main reason why the overall economic impact of other models  remains marginal, and Jordan’s share of investments and successful exits remain low in comparison to  inputs and the region. We believed this partly was due to:

1. Inefficiencies in managing innovation input, high duplication, and low coordination among

ecosystem stakeholders.

2. Ineffectiveness of tool based capacity-building programs.  3. Lack of focus on quality and requisite know-how of developing investment-ready tech-based

startups.

Name: Jana Telfah  Email: nbarker@hotmail.com  Mobile: (820)913-3241x894

Here is a glimpse of our white board mapping:

Name: Jana Telfah  Email: nbarker@hotmail.com  Mobile: (820)913-3241x894

Therefore, we proposed a rethinking of current acceleration models to the University board members,  by developing vertically focused, innovation-driven, hybrid models that are dynamic, relevant and  effective in delivering high quality investable and scalable tech-based startups. This would in turn  support job creation, adoption of 21st century skills and know-how, increase mobilization of risk capital,  and improve Jordan’s ranking in innovation & entrepreneurship.

Approach  As previously mentioned, Mind and Journey Mapping were two successful design tools to be obtained  by our team to access the “What is” phase for other models and the status of the startups in Jordan.  Both tools helped us in getting insightful inputs and establishing solid criteria for the “What If” phase,  which we are currently working on.

Therefore, the rational for future action for the model design stems from the below outcome three  needs:

1. Need to improve the quality and quantity of investment -ready companies within the Jordanian

tech innovation and ICT sectors.

2. Need for novel and effective mechanisms, strategies and programs of incubation & acceleration

that significantly enhance investment-readiness and success of TBS.

3. Need to seed and nurture the necessary mindset, skillset, and culture of innovation driven

entrepreneurship among Jordanian youth.

