The Design Thinking mindset for Disruptive innovation

“The farms and factories in the agri-food sector, must implement disruptive innovation and smart technology applications in a human center approach, move very fast embracing the fourth industrial revolution opportunities”

Design Thinking is the core of disruptive innovation.

The Design is changing the manner in which a company or a leading organization makes value. The focus of innovation has moved from engineering-driven to design-driven, from product-driven to client-driven, and from marketing-focused to user-experience-focused. When design thinking principles are applied to innovation and strategy, the success rate for innovation significantly improves.

The difference between what is called incremental and disrupting innovation, is the culture that you develop within your organisation and the people working within the organisation when they basically want to take up the challenge. An incremental innovation examples focuses on cost or feature improvements in existing products or services. A disruptive innovation example is one that creates a dramatic change that transforms existing markets or industries, or even creates new ones, by introducing groundbreaking new products.

A design thinking approach turns traditional innovation on its head. It starts by evaluating what customers want as opposed to developing a new product and then trying to sell it. And it works.

Design thinking mind set principles

In the past months, ECTE and LDI Berlin partners in DTraIN project have worked for developing among others the pre-steps module of the Design thinking course. Breaking out the conventional mind-set is the outmost for having effective results. By marrying deep customer insights with an understanding of shifting technology and market forces, they can reimagine how they interact with customers, effectively putting themselves in their customers shoes and the customer journey at the center of the design process. They don’t focus on what product or service they want to develop, but on solutions they can create to solve customer problems or ease pain points. As a mindset, Design Thinking is characterized by several key principles:

-Innovation is made by humans for Humans.
-Use of a combination of divergent and convergent thinking.
-Fail often and early” facilitates human learning. -Design Thinking is based on experimentation with many new ideas.
-Build prototypes that can be experienced.
-Test early with customers that is closely related with prior principles.
-Design never ends, meaning that work must proceed iteratively in cycles, and finally,
-Design Thinking needs a special place. To conduct Design Thinking projects successfully, special spaces are required: designed according to the teams’ needs and equipped with the right materials.

Art Connects Mental Health: A Time to Breathe

Art Connects Mental Health: A Time to Breathe is a two-year European wide transnational partnership project that provides education, training and awareness-raising at national and European levels using creative processes to promote positive mental health and emotional wellbeing with youth.

Six partner organisations come together to create a Europe-wide Creative Arts for Health and Well
Being hub, a new online, interactive, learning resource centre that supports the role of the arts to promote physical and emotional positive mental health and well-being for all.

A challenging event like the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic can affect everyone’s mental health. Each of us is doing our best to look after ourselves however young people may need extra attention and support. Building synergies between the arts, youth education, and health and well-being, this project supports the role of the arts to promote positive mental health and emotional well-being, to overcome stress and anxiety and to build resilience across Europe, strengthening links across Europe in relation to the arts, education and positive mental health and well-being with and by young people.

A Time to Breathe is supported by Erasmus+. The partners are Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality, Dublin, Ireland (lead partner); Ente acli istruzione professionale piemonte, (ENTE) Torino, Italy; Euroreso, Naples, Italy; European Centre in Training for Employment, Rethymno, Greece; Fundacion Intras, Valladolid, Spain and Youth Peace Group Danube, Vukovar, Croatia.

RESTAT project TN meeting in Rethymno, Crete

After a long break from attending Transnational Meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, the consortium of the RESTAT project met in Rethymno, Crete, Greece on July, 22-23 2021.

The scope of the 3rd Transnational Meeting held in Rethymno, Crete was to validate the produced educational material on Accessible Tourism and to set the path for the smooth completion of the next Intellectual Output, namely “Boosting Employability and Job Mobility of Tourism Professionals – Career Guidance Tool”. The consortium discussed in detail the results from the Pilot Tests conducted in each partner country and evaluated the modules for the training of Tourism Professionals.

Further, partners from the RESTAT Project set the goals for the next period of implementation of the project which covers the development of profiling methods and jobs analysis and development of career-matching method.

The consortium of the RESTAT project is comprised of Comune di TUSA (IT), New Horizons (IT), ECTE (EL), FUEJI (ES), ROGEPA (RO), Handy Club (CZ) and it is implemented with the funding of the European Union, under the Erasmus+, Key Action 2, Strategic Partnerships for VET | Innovation – Project Code: 2018-1-IT01-KA202-006891.

Live webinar – Design Thinking for entrepreneurship in the Agri-food sector (Pre-steps)

  |  Athens (GMT 2:00)  |  3:00 PM Central European Time

Free registration: HERE

The webinar introduces the pre-steps of the design thinking process and is implemented in the context of the European project DTRaIN. The pre-steps of the Design Thinking is the first module out of five of the DTRaIN course, that is going to be developed in the coming months.

The webinar has a two-hour duration and includes the following Learning units

  • The Design Thinking Process
  • Developing the designer’s mindset
  • Identify an opportunity for a design thinking project
  • Drafting a design brief
  • Planning a design thinking process (people, setting, research)

Addressed to entrepreneurs, University/Vet students, trainers, professionals n the agrifood sector, stakeholders.

EUROMOB: Approaches to certify skills and competences in international mobility

Euromob is an online tool that is developing in the context of the EUROMOB project with the aim to identify, measure, and recognize the skills that learners have acquired during their mobility program in a European country, with the acknowledgment of companies and education institutions.

Approximately 50 thousand young students engage in international mobility for a traineeship every year through the Erasmus+ program. The benefits of these academic activities are recognized at all levels including inter-personal and professional competencies. Students, the direct and main beneficiaries of such initiatives, become aware of the added-value for their employability and the number of applicants is increasing at a rate over 10% per year.

A key concern with regards to this type of mobility – mobility for an internship/traineeship – relates to the certification of the acquired skills and competencies. Internships/traineeships evolve in an environment that is quite distinct from traditional classroom settings. Several characteristics of traditional classroom environments are not observed in internship/traineeship activities thus preventing the use of similar assessment and certification mechanisms. In general, the following internship/traineeship activities characteristics are not observed in traditional classroom environments:

  • students are enrolled for a short period of time
  • involved in practical tasks to perform certain activities (highly practical)
  • formal assessment, written exams, and the like are not expected either welcome
  • companies, in general, internship/traineeship hosts, are more focused on results than on student assessment
  • companies are not willing to spend time on academic/educational assessment tasks

These circumstances demand new approaches to certify the skills and competencies acquired by an increasing number of students during an internship/traineeship.

The European Center in Training for Employment – ECTE,  is participating in the EUROMOB project consortium, for addresses the development of recognition of skills and qualifications with the objective of enhancing youth employment opportunities. Youth employability is considered as the main priority in Europe and the optic of the project is to reduce the breach between graduates and companies through direct recognition of skills.