Entrepreneurship Education and Design Thinking: A Conceptual Threshold for Their Integration in Indonesian Higher Education

Proceedings of The 3rd International Conference on New Approaches in Education

Year: 2021

DOI:

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Entrepreneurship Education and Design Thinking: A Conceptual Threshold for Their Integration in Indonesian Higher Education

Ria Tristya Amalia, Harald F. O. von Korflesch

ABSTRACT: 

Many ongoing discussions in design thinking show similarities to the current entrepreneurship education debate on integrating both disciplines in the context of higher education. In that case, some articles, mainly from the developed countries, have addressed this issue, though fragmentedly. In contrast, this integration-educational type is rarely found in developing countries, particularly Indonesia. Additionally, very few studies have broadened the discussion to include the teaching entrepreneurship-design thinking process cycle and the conceptual threshold to support the integrated teaching process. This paper uses the narrative literature review and in-depth qualitative case-study discussion as the methodology. It aims to establish a conceptual link and threshold between these two areas and provide conceptual strategies for integrating and teaching them in Indonesian higher education. In doing so, this paper has critically summarized and synthesized parts of both the entrepreneurship education and design thinking literature. The details and significance of the conceptual threshold have also been reviewed. The findings of this study are the five primary entrepreneurship-design thinking process cycles (i.e., understanding the problem comprehensively, generating ideas, experimenting iteratively, testing the solutions, and implementing solutions). The process strongly incorporates the “empathy-reflect-visualize” cycle and the integrated conceptual threshold as a teaching support tool. This conceptual study provides new pathways for enriching current teaching and research practices of entrepreneurship education and design thinking.

Keywords: design thinking, entrepreneurship in higher education, conceptual threshold, pedagogy, Indonesia.