Resource:How to design an eight part series of innovation and entrepreneurship workshops

Introduction & Inspiration

When making a landscape canvas of the I&E climate on campus, the leadership circle in Dalhousie made several observations. One of the most important was the lack of a program or event that introduced students to entrepreneurial and innovative thinking. From engineering to the arts, they considered activities in which students get hands-on experience with I&E a great opportunity to introduce student to I&E and to inspire and empower students. To maximise impact, they set out and created an eight-series workshop on I&E of 2.5h each that was open to students from all disciplines. Based on their experience, this wiki provides a useful starting guide on how to design and lead a workshop series on I&E.

Workshop Organization

Identifying your target audience is the first step towards organizing a workshop series. Workshops for students new to entrepreneurship and workshops catered to students with start-up experience will have different focuses. Workshops for beginners could focus more on design-thinking and prototyping. Workshops for more experienced students can focus on funding and creating a great team environment.

After identifying the demographics of your audience, work to outline your 8 workshop topics. Of course, these topics can be changed if needed. It is recommended that the UIF team have one-hour meeting each week to organize the workshop. One member should be the point person for one workshop. That can be the same person for every workshop, or the faciliator role can be rotated throughout the team. Ideally the point person would be the team member with the most experience with the workshop topic. If that is not possible, don't be afraid to reach out to faculty members.

Once you have completed a rough outline and come up with a brandname for the sessions, you are ready to start promoting. Meanwhile, it’s time to plan the workshops in more detail, so think of themes, activities, and a detailed schedule for each workshop. Inviting local business owners, or faculty members, to present at your workshop is a great way to engage the community. During your initial planning meetings decide who you will invite and what would like them to present about. As a courtesy you must give them as much time as possible. Also, plan back-up schedules, to avoid any last minute scrambles.

When planning the schedule of your workshops determine if time for networking would be beneficial for your audience.

Logistics

To keep things in time in a workshop with a lot of activities and information is essential to practice. Only with the experience you will get better and better with this.

Keep them motivated

Some people don't have the strength to get into unknown stuffs so YOU have to start the conversation. Also it is important to promote our values so everyone who takes part of the workshop is aware of them.

Impact

For future workshops, it is imperative to improve the ones that were held, through evaluations and feedback.</span></span>

• The workshops must not be only focused on design thinking and innovation, but focused on what the customers, the participants, want and need.
• It’s important to get feedback from the participants. If possible, after every workshop. In doing so, you can improve the workshop for next session or for next workshop.
• In every workshop, there is the fear of delivery. And it doesn’t matter if only 5 or 10 people go, the important is to keep pushing and keep doing the workshop.
• There has been a great interest in the doing the workshop next year. Although, and it is an issue that is being currently working on, the time of the workshop, because the aim is to fit everybody schedule.

Tuesday Take-Offs - Example of an I&E workshop

From Sep to Nov 2016, the 2016 Spring UIF fellows from Dalhousie organized the Tuesday Take-Offs, a free series of I&E workshops open to all students interested. With the primary goal of getting students in touch with I&E thinking, the fellows designed a brand and workshop outline, check it out!