The first module presents the Design Thinking methodology, which will ask you to think in a “user-centric way.” By applying the concepts introduced here, you will learn how to think about your product or service from the point of view of your target customers. You will learn about the “5 stages of Design Thinking”, which will provide you with a solid framework to define, prototype and test your idea repeatedly, until you have something that can truly work.

Although it is crucial to any entrepreneurship venture, market research has the disadvantage of being both time-consuming and expensive. This is where “lean” market research comes in. In the second module, you will learn about the importance and fundamental elements of market research, including gathering a combination of primary and secondary data for your analysis, as well as go through several practical methods of gathering the information you need to successfully market your product. After this, you will learn a number of techniques, based on the “Build-Measure-Learn” feedback loop, to both increase the speed and decrease the cost of your market research activities.

The third module introduces the “Lean Start-up” concept, defined by entrepreneur and blogger Eric Ries. In it, you will learn about the “Build-Measure-Learn” feedback loop, which will teach you how to quickly turn your ideas into products, see how your customers respond, and then either pivot to something else, or persevere in your current direction. As an added bonus, you will also learn how to make the most of your failures and learn from them, building on your imperfect and unworkable prototypes until you have an offering that will actually solve your customers’ problems.