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ET
64,1 A disruptive model for delivering
higher education programs within
the context of
126 entrepreneurship education
Received 17 March 2021 Gerrit Anton de Waal
Revised 9 September 2021
2 October 2021 School of Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, and
Accepted 22 December 2021
Alex Maritz
La Trobe Business School, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this practitioner paper is to explore whether the principles of Design Thinking and
the Lean Startup could be employed in developing a disruptive model for delivering educational programs
within higher education in a way that attempts to eliminate the multitude of problems facing this industry,
while simultaneously adhering to the principles of frugal innovation and meeting relevant sustainability goals.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors followed a design thinking approach, employing tools such
as empathy mapping, customer journey, value proposition and semi-structured interviews to obtain a deep
level of understanding of the problems educators and students within the context of entrepreneurship
education are facing. Throughout the process they drew on the practice of emergent inquiry and customer co-
creation to help guide decision making.
Findings – The authors successfully derived a conceptual solution in the form of a Minimum Viable Product of
which the features were tested against the multitude of user needs and requirements. It was possible to
demonstrate how the solution meets all nine of the requirements for frugal innovations while simultaneously
adhering to applicable sustainability principles.
Practical implications – The proposed solution offers a potential opportunity to first-movers in chosen
academic disciplines to become leaders in online education.
Originality/value – Even in an industry such as higher education there is a dire need for frugality and finding
sustainable solutions for educators and students in both developed and developing markets. With this paper
the authors succeed in presenting innovative combinations of digital artefacts, platforms and infrastructure to
arrive at a novel crowd-sourced solution that is unique in its design.
Keywords Digital technologies, Disruptive innovation, Entrepreneurship education, Frugal innovation,
Higher education, Sustainability
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Globally, organisations across many industries are witnessing an increasing rate in the
introduction of disruptive innovations through a combination of digital technologies
(Achtenhagen and Achtenhagen, 2019) and business model innovation (Kane, 2018). This is
threatening the existence of even those organisations that have long dominated their
markets. A further concern is that new entrants are often more agile than incumbents and
tend to be closer to markets and customers.
The Higher Education Industry (HEI) is no exception to the above. Globally, the industry
is in crisis because new technologies, changing customer needs and the COVID-19 pandemic
are rendering existing business models less effective and less efficient (Maritz et al., 2020).
Rayome (2016) succinctly captures the state of the higher education industry in stating:
Education þ Training
Vol. 64 No. 1, 2022
pp. 126-140 Technology is accelerating, and modernization and expansion of the higher education system is
© Emerald Publishing Limited desperately needed. Our higher education system is still stuck in the Middle Ages. The 1000-year-old
0040-0912
DOI 10.1108/ET-03-2021-0102 university structure is rigid and obsolete, inhibiting human potential and failing to prepare students
 for life in the new millennium. The edtech industry is booming, technology is booming, but it’s Disruptive
difficult to infuse them into the current system.
model for higher
In Australia, new entrants such as the “Big Four” accounting firms, online providers such as education
edX, and others, such as SEEK, increasingly offer competing qualifications. Both existing programs
industry players and new entrants are searching for new and sustainable business models to
maintain and/or capture their share of the multi-billion-dollar HEI industry.
Blundell et al. (2020) observe that digital technologies are more commonly used for pedagogy 127
enhancement, rather than to achieve wide-scale transformation in Learning and Teaching
(L&T). We argue that radical innovation in L&T is crucial to securing HEIs’ future in the
education industry. Incremental innovations will neither ensure their survival nor provide them
with the edge over competitors. This leads to the purpose of this practitioner paper in which we
executed the first phases of a design thinking project, utilising the principles of frugal innovation
and sustainability, to develop a radically new course delivery model for higher education. While
in this paper we focus on the context of Entrepreneurship Education (EE), it might very well be
possible for other academic disciplines, in particular management disciplines, to adopt and adapt
the proposed solution. Although other disciplines might be facing similar challenges to EE,
which we elaborate upon in the next section, it is important to keep in mind that in many aspects
EE differs markedly from other forms of management education (Oluwasanya, 2016), hence the
need for adaptation.
To delineate EE from other management disciplines, we use the contextual definition of
Maritz et al. (2021).
Contextualised content, experiential methods and initiatives supporting the creation of knowledge,
competencies and experiences within entrepreneurial spaces that enable diverse participants to
initiate and participate in entrepreneurial value-creating processes such as transformation,
disruption, and startups.
Other than the above definition, the main differentiation between EE and other management
disciplines is the experiential nature of EE, coupled with the dynamic components of creativity,
innovation, proactivity and risk-taking in exploiting opportunities (Maritz et al., 2019).
This paper is structured as follows. First, we provide a brief overview of the main
challenges facing EE; followed by a description of the design thinking project, the self-
imposed development constraints and the methodology we followed to develop a potential
solution, presented here as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This we follow up by drawing
preliminary conclusions on the significance and implications of the outcomes. Finally, we
deliberate on how the MVP could be implemented and speculate on its disruptive potential in
not only the EE space but potentially in other disciplines too. In Tables A1–A4 we map the
proposed solution’s features to the anticipated benefits for the main stakeholders.

Challenges facing EE
Globally, most universities offer EE ranging from single elective courses to minor programs
(four units of learning) to major programs (typically eight units of learning). In Australia, 40
universities offer entrepreneurship courses either as stand-alone units, minors or majors
(Maritz et al., 2016). Teaching is mostly done by tenured academic staff, but there is
widespread use of casual (part-time) staff to meet the shortages in tenured staff amidst the
huge demand that is mainly driven by the huge influx of international students. Both types of
educators are predominantly academic-focused and may never have been involved in
startups. Since the start of 2020, the situation has drastically changed with the advent of
COVID-19. At present in Australia, most universities are going through cost-cutting exercises
to compensate for lost revenue due to sharp declines in international students (NTEU, 2020). It
is estimated that Australian universities shed at least 17,300 jobs in 2020 (Zhou, 2021).
ET Because of this, and even though Australian HEIs having experienced a moderate EE boom in
64,1 recent years (Maritz et al., 2019), it is easy to foresee that in the years to come entrepreneurship
offerings will reduce in number, and perhaps also in scope.
Apart from HEIs offering EE, the next big cluster of entities delivering EE is private
academies that offer both face-to-face (e.g. The Entourage – https://www.the-entourage.com/)
and fully online teaching (e.g. Jumpcut Academy – https://jumpcut.com/). These private
academies pose a serious threat to formal education delivered through HEIs, in particular, the
128 entrepreneurship discipline because they place a greater emphasis on applied learning with
the sole aim of launching startups, other than what is often the case in HEI programs and
courses. Instead of employing academics, they utilise successful businesspeople as tutors and
mentors. Such offerings are much cheaper than university programs and deliver outcomes
must faster. For students who are more interested in getting into business of their own in the
shortest possible time, this is likely to become the preferred option of study.
A third major category of EE is specialist online providers that offer complete courses on
specific topics. The list is growing every day, including major providers such as HSTalks,
Top Hat, Edx, Coursera and LinkedIn Learning (Lynda). These operators offer courses that
are both free and paid-for courses, some resembling MOOCs, while others are more of the
traditional e-learning type structure.
Finally, a developing trend is the emergence of online content that is not packaged as
courses or programs, but is offered in the format of loose-standing modules such as videos,
podcasts, slideshows, blogs, etc. Such content is offered as paid subscriptions, or increasingly
so, as opensource content, free of charge – known as Open Educational Resources (OER). This
development applies to multiple disciplines, not only entrepreneurship.
While many of the private platforms provide great content on specific topics, they cannot
claim to offer holistic solutions as would be required by university educators when
developing programs and courses that cover a complete curriculum such as for
entrepreneurship. University educators that utilise such “fragmented sources of content”
must still follow a piecemeal approach in populating university curricula with appropriate
materials, simultaneously addressing quality assurance issues. Increasingly so, there is a
need for sourcing credible and up-to-date content from a small number of sources that span
whole disciplines.

Project description
The project was completed within the context of a 12-week “Innovation Jam” program that
started in January 2020, managed by an Australian university business accelerator. The
program aimed to foster innovation from within the University, in particular, to accelerate the
growth of the business college concerning its Ed-tech capability. The current project was
among seven others that were competitively selected among many college entries based on its
perceived potential to improve the college’s performance in Teaching and Learning and to
ultimately achieve better outcomes for university students. Throughout the 12-week
program, the seven teams followed a structured approach incorporating elements of Design
Thinking (Brown, 2008) and The Lean Startup (Ries, 2011) that focused participants to follow
a logical sequence of activities in developing their solutions. The program concluded in June
2020 when all teams pitched their projects to an open online forum.

Methodology
The preceding sections paint a picture of significant challenges facing the higher education
industry, and an overview of the dilemmas within EE. In this context, we restate the research
question as it applies to the entrepreneurship discipline:
 Starting with a clean slate, what would be the optimal EE model for higher education? Disruptive
Inherent to answering this question was the need to derive a for-profit business model that model for higher
meets the criteria of desirability, feasibility and viability – the so-called three lenses of education
innovation (Brown, 2008). Given the freedom of design to develop a radical solution with the programs
possibility for disruption, the setting for the project closely resembled that of a technology
startup, hence the contemporary methodologies of Design Thinking (Buchanan, 1992) and
Lean Startup (Ries, 2011) were deemed suitable and appropriate for guiding the project and 129
development of an optimal solution (Tschimmel and Santos, 2018).
For this project, we used the six-phase D-Think Model described by Tschimmel et al.
(2017). In the first phase, Emergence, we identified the opportunity and described it in the
broad context of the perceived problem. The scope of challenges that we provided in the
preceding sections informed opportunity identification. This step set the scene for framing
the educational challenge and setting objectives and constraints for the project.
An empirical investigation first took hold in the second phase, Empathy, where we used a
variety of methods to better understand the context of the problem. Here we applied tools, such
as empathy mapping, customer journey and semi-structured interviews, to obtain a deep level of
understanding of the problems educators and students are facing. The outcome of this phase
provided detailed lists of their needs and feelings, which served as input for the next phase.
In the Experimentation phase, we used the Value Proposition Canvas (Osterwalder et al.,
2014) and team brainstorming to generate ideas that could potentially serve as solutions to
identified pains, gains and jobs to be done. In consultation with our end-users and team support
members provided by the university accelerator, we arrived at the final set of solution features
after having eliminated unwanted ideas and having developed improvements to initial ideas. We
incorporated this into our first MVP which we describe in full below.
Because we applied the practice of customer co-development by obtaining constant feedback
from educators and students throughout phases two and three, there was no need to do so again
in the fourth phase, Elaboration. In doing so we drew on the practice of emergent inquiry
(Keegan, 2009) which is a form of commercial (as opposed to academic) qualitative research of
which the aim is to help guide client decision making, thus serving in a consultation capacity.
This non-conventional approach inevitably requires the researcher to interpret observations and
make judgement calls on data obtained from research participants who are regarded as
discipline experts. Emergent inquiry is particularly fitting to the context of Design Thinking and
Lean Startup practices as it facilitates highly interactive co-creation with research participants
and the client in less structured ways than academic qualitative research.
The fifth phase, Exposition, represented a point in time when we communicated the
proposed solution in an open forum to a University Panel chaired by the Deputy Vice-
Chancellor Business and Vice-President. Other panel members included the Deputy Pro Vice-
Chancellor Learning and Teaching of the Business College, the Business Accelerator Director
and the Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor Strategy and Innovation for the College. Approximately
60 university staff attended the online presentations.
The last phase of the D-Think model is termed Extension. As we explain elsewhere in this
paper, we have not reached the stage of implementation. With this paper, we wish to
communicate our conceptual design to external parties for further development, and possible
collaborative or independent future research, and ideally, commercialisation.

Project outcomes for the first four phases

Phase 1: emergence
To kickstart the project we started with opportunity identification and framing it in the broad
context of the perceived problem. The extant literature presented earlier in the paper painted
a picture of the specific challenges facing EE in the context of Higher Education. Because of
ET the complexity and scope of the problem, it cannot be well defined; there can be no single goal
64,1 and a set of well-defined rules to guide attempts at solving it. These characteristics are typical
of wicked problems (Coyne, 2005) and hence the problem facing EE is arguably a wicked one.
Speculating what the future university might look like, Srivastava et al. (2012) predicted
that the current Australian model – consisting of broad-based teaching and research – will
not be viable in the next 10–15 years. We believe this is true for universities across the globe,
exasperated by the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost a decade has passed, and it
130 appears the situation is getting worse. Srivastava et al.’s predictions are based on what
happened in other industries such as media, retail and entertainment, stating that higher
education is bound to follow suit. By enlarge, according to their research, the major change
would be in “the way ‘value’ is created by higher education providers, public and private
alike” (Srivastava et al., 2012). Based on these observations, we next frame our design
challenge on the concepts of value creation and digital technologies.
Value creation. In a position paper titled “The Future of Education and Skills”, the OECD
proposes that efforts for improvement should concentrate on the “sustainability of people, profit,
planet, and peace, through partnership” (OECD, 2018). As the COVID-19 pandemic, at the time of
writing, is still causing havoc among educators and students in all nations, Maritz et al. (2020)
remind us that entrepreneurship offers a means of transitioning from surviving to thriving.
They furthermore suggest that the pandemic is challenging universities worldwide to create the
right “space” where they can optimally fulfil their mission of teaching entrepreneurship.
For universities to operate sustainably, they need to be profitable and therefore our goal was
to design a “for-profit” solution. At the same time, however, universities have a responsibility
beyond the community of students that are enrolled with them. Given this, we aligned our effort
with four of the applicable 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be
achieved by 2030. These are quality education (Goal 4), up-gradation of infrastructure and
increased resource-use efficiency (Goal 9), reduced inequality (Goal 10) and establishing
partnerships to facilitate innovation and knowledge sharing (Goal 17).
Sustainability is closely associated with another concept that guided our “value-add”
design, that of frugal innovation. Frugal innovation is defined as the development of products
or services that significantly reduce the total cost of ownership by focusing on core
functionalities and reducing non-core features, thus leading to greater resource efficiency
(Weyrauch and Herstatt, 2016).
Leadbeater (2015) believes there is an enormous scope of frugal innovation opportunities
available to education. He sees significant value-add possibilities towards reducing the immense
waste of talent, finding ultra-low-cost ways to educate millions of resource-constrained people in
a socially responsible way, and designing the “teacherless” education environment. To achieve
this, Leadbeater bases his hopes on social innovations that are made possible through a
combination of no-tech, low-tech as well as high-tech. Throughout the project our team drew
inspiration from Leadbeater’s beliefs in developing a frugal EE solution.
Digital technology elements: digital artefacts, platforms and infrastructure. The
fundamental role that digital technologies will play in transforming EE is undeniable.
Nambisan (2017) refers to the intersection of digital technologies and entrepreneurship as
digital entrepreneurship and calls for “careful consideration of digital technologies and their
unique characteristics in shaping entrepreneurial pursuits”. Very useful to our project was
his distinction of three interrelated core elements of digital technologies, namely digital
artefacts, platforms and infrastructure. The reason for this is that in our deliberation of how
we used design thinking to develop an MVP, we drew deeply on each of these critical elements
in describing the extent to which we conceptually innovated each element to arrive at the
MVP. As the three components of digital technologies combine to form the powerhouse that
drives the business model, it is important to describe them in generic terms here (see Table 1)
before evolving their meanings later in this paper.
Definition
Digital artefacts
A digital component, application or media content
that is part of a new product (or service) and offers a
specific functionality or value to the end-user
Digital platforms
A shared, common set of services and architecture
that hosts complementary offerings, including digital
artefacts
Digital infrastructure
Digital technology tools and systems (e.g. cloud
computing, data analytics, online communities, social
media, 3D printing, digital makerspaces, etc.) that
offer communication, collaboration and/or computing
capabilities to support innovation and
entrepreneurship
Characteristics
Disruptive
model for higher
education
Can be either a stand-alone software/hardware
component (e.g. app) on a physical device or part of a programs
broader ecosystem of offerings that operate on a
digital platform
131
Are often marked by the role of a single firm, the
platform leader, in establishing the modular platform
and in orchestrating both value creation and value
appropriation
Enables the engagement on a global scale of a greater
number and diverse set of people in all stages of the
entrepreneurial process; provides the capability to
support end-to-end entrepreneurial activities (e.g. Table 1.
cloud computing, data analytics, crowdsourcing, The core elements of
online communities, digital makerspaces) digital technologies

Phase 2: empathy
Below we summarise the findings from this phase, first from the perspective of educators,
then from the viewpoint of students. It was very important to gain a full understanding of the
context of the problem before an attempt was made to derive potential solutions.
The problem expressed from the perspective of educators. University educators are
academic scholars whose main responsibilities include teaching and conducting research.
Few see themselves as technology wizards who want to engage at a high level in the
development of online content and utilising online pedagogies. They find keeping up to date
with the ever-increasing number of technology apps very time-consuming, taking away
precious time from scholarly and research activity.
Educators commonly must repeat the same lectures over and over, term after term – which is
not making efficient use of their time. Designing up-to-date courses delivered via F2F and/or
blended learning methods is very laborious. Many universities now prohibit the use of
prescribed textbooks. This places an extra burden on professors to find suitable and high-
quality content, appropriate cases, exercises, videos and complementary material, on top of
activities such as maintaining the Learning Management System (LMS), monitoring student
participation, progress and general student administration. Curriculum design is a challenging
and time-consuming process that needs constant review and renewal, especially when new
information originates from multiple sources of varying, and sometimes questionable, quality
levels.
Educators often use free online materials that may unexpectedly be removed from the
Internet without notice, which causes accessibility problems when students encounter dead
links. At times, such as during the COVID-19 crisis, students who study remotely from certain
parts of the world were unable to access YouTube videos because of in-country restrictions
placed on certain media providers.
Even though educators are specialists in their areas, it is hard for them to keep abreast of
the latest developments in the field, and then update learning materials accordingly. Every
day, all over the world, educators at different HEIs are redesigning the “education wheel”, and
often not doing it optimally. The net result is a significant multiplication of effort.
ET The current student generation does not engage in face-to-face (F2F) teaching like they
64,1 used to do. Lectures are generally poorly attended. It is not uncommon for attendance rates to
drop below 20% after the second week of the semester. Educators find it a huge challenge to
effectively communicate and share the latest in academic research with students that relates
to each topic of study, especially with undergraduate students.
The problem expressed from the perspective of students. Students report that, despite their
lecturers being experts in their fields, they are often not the greatest educators. This is
132 perpetuated by their improper utilisation of the latest state-of-the-art learning technologies.
Lectures tend to be boring, especially when delivered in large auditorium-type rooms that don’t
facilitate good interaction. This observation stems from the practice when lecturers do plenty of
talking while running through endless sets of slides. Students acknowledge that traveling from
home at inconvenient times to attend lectures is another contributor to poor lecture attendance.
They believe that getting familiar with the course content by themselves is far more productive
than attending lectures. However, they do appreciate the importance of attending tutorials and
workshops face-to-face, or remotely, because that is where they perceive the most value is added
to their learning.
While students appreciate not having to purchase expensive prescribed entrepreneurship
texts, they are concerned that their learning materials now originate from a variety of
different sources and the quality levels vary from very good to very poor.
Students are also of the opinion that the blended learning approach does not work well.
The reason for this is that they don’t have enough time before tutorials to go over all the
videos and readings so, often, they come to tutorials unprepared. This is especially true for
students with English as a second or third language.

Phase 3: experimentation
Value proposition. The purpose of the experimentation phase was to generate and develop
ideas to potentially address as many as possible of the perceived problems. Strongly
underpinning this phase was our belief that the very essence of EE is the teaching and
learning of entrepreneurship, taking into account the perspective of all stakeholders, students
and educators through the lens of the scholarship of learning and teaching entrepreneurship
(Neck and Corbett, 2018). Learning through practice involves adopting learning experiences,
ownership of learning, teachers as facilitators, readiness to engage and a commitment to
learning. For example, we aligned our teaching philosophies to facilitate the transfer of
knowledge across start-up dynamics and innovation as a tool for entrepreneurship (de Waal
and Knott, 2013; Maritz et al., 2019).
We furthermore included integration from leading best practice EE scholars, allowing
contextualisation of global entrepreneurship imperatives, recency of EE programs, together
with the emerging scholarship of EE across the globe (Kuratko and Morris, 2018; Looi and
Maritz, 2021).
To ensure all stakeholders took ownership while determining the development path
(Singh et al., 2014), we followed an iterative process in which we constantly tested ideas with
educators, students, education providers and potential content creators. We captured the
outcome of this phase in the Value Proposition Canvas (VPC) (Osterwalder et al., 2014),
presented in Tables A1–A4. From these tables, we were able to construe a schematic model of
the aggregate solution which we present in Figures 1 and 2.
Minimum viable product (MVP). The Shared Learning Repository (SLR) as depicted in
Figure 1 is the enabling technology platform consisting of a backend Content Management
System (CMS) that provides easy access and content submission facilities for Content Creators.
Through the middle-end, educators (Course Coordinators) view and select the content available
in the CMS, while students indirectly access the content through the front-end that seamlessly
integrates with the LMS of participating HEIs. As such the SLR is an intelligent e-learning
platform that leverages digital resources, learning analytics, self-assessment, information Disruptive
technologies and artificial intelligence to facilitate personalised e-learning. model for higher
What follows is a description of the sequential steps involved to demonstrate the solution.
In Figure 2, step 1 involves the design of a comprehensive content index for the entire
education
academic discipline of entrepreneurship, spanning all possible topics and subtopics that can programs
be integrated as stand-alone units in courses.
Steps 2 and 3 take place when leading world experts in the discipline, whether they be
educators, practitioners or publishers, are appointed for writing modules of specific discipline 133
content that reside in, and are updated, via the SLR. These “content creators” are crowdsourced,
by invitation only and they earn lucrative royalties, far exceeding what they would earn through
traditional authorship arrangements with book publishers, but only when their content is
accessed via the platform. Learning modules consist of comprehensive multimedia content that
is seamlessly delivered via the SLR into the LMS of subscribing HEIs. Content may assume the
form of video lectures, readings, workshop activities, quizzes, case studies, vignettes, tools,
research summaries, etc.
Steps 4 and 5 occur when course coordinators who subscribe to the platform via their
universities, access the SLR’s course wizard and seamlessly select from the content index or
comprehensive “discipline tree”, those content modules that they wish to include in their
respective courses. A live dashboard provides running totals of the cumulative credits to
ensure the optimum population of content into existing university-accredited course shells.
During Step 6 students, using the flipped classroom principle, complete all the video
lectures and associated activities online before attending workshops. They only interact with
teaching staff during practical seminars or workshops (Step 7), which can be delivered face-
to-face, or remotely. The role of the educator is redefined as facilitating applied learning and
peer-to-peer collaboration, as well as contextualising knowledge through expert mentorship
and coaching (Step 8). Under this model, educators no longer deliver lectures, which frees up

Figure 1.
SLR architecture and
actors

Figure 2.
Schematic presentation
of the Content
Integrated Learning
System (CILS)
ET expensive lecture room real estate. However, they are still responsible for the design of
64,1 curricula, assessment items, coordination and other associated challenge-based activities.
Since the only interaction of students with teaching staff will be through two-or three-hour
workshops, it is of utmost importance that the workshop activities are designed to produce
exceptional student learning experiences that focus on applied learning. To achieve this,
teaching staff should undergo training that is specifically geared to this form of engagement,
such as mentoring and coaching. Furthermore, entrepreneurship workshop rooms should be
134 fitted out like typical accelerator/incubator workspaces where teams can work creatively on a
range of entrepreneurial activities, using flipcharts, whiteboards, breakout rooms, presentation
areas, etc. Students should have easy access to makerspaces where they can create prototypes of
their products with 3D printing, have access to computer aided design, etc. The quality
experience that universities provide during the workshops will be as important as the online
learning obtained via the platform. Since the provision of lecture content is now standardised via
the same platform, and thus creating a level playing field among all participating HEIs,
institutions can only differentiate their offerings through the quality of workshops they deliver.

Implications and contribution

At project onset, we set the challenge to design a disruptive model for higher education based on
the principles of frugal innovation, through the process of Design Thinking intertwined with
Lean Startup principles. Earlier, in Table 1, we first elaborated on the three digital technology
elements that would, in principle, constitute the building blocks of the MVP. We then explained
how the first element, digital artefacts, manifests as Content Modules that are developed through
specialist crowdsourcing. This is an example of breakthrough innovation (Mascitelli, 2000), as
arguably it would only be possible to comprehensively populate a discipline tree (such as
Entrepreneurship) with content using expert crowdsourcing, as the eventual business model
owner is unlikely to be able to employ enough people to carry out this mammoth task by
themselves.
The second digital element underpinning the MVP is the digital platform, which we
depicted in Figure 1, and named it the Shared Learning Repository (SLR). It facilitates three
user interfaces for the creation, selection and usage of digital artefacts (content modules).
Finally, we provided a schematic diagram (see Figure 2) depicting the required digital
infrastructure for implementing the eventual business model supporting the final
manifestation of the MVP, which we termed the Content Integrated Learning System
(CILS). We next discuss whether, and to what extent, our project has met the design challenge
and objectives, and what the practical implications are for both EE and in more general terms.

Achieving the four sustainable development goals (SDGs)

Through the delivery of top-quality, web-based entrepreneurship courses that were compiled
by experts in the field, the goal of providing quality education in both developing and
industrialised countries would have been met. In terms of upgrading or even leapfrogging
educational infrastructure, the cloud-based CILS platform would be accessible to students
anywhere in the world where there is access to the Internet. The subsequent business model
that is yet to be developed to support a profitable offering could be designed in such a way
that HEIs in the developed world would sponsor their counterparts in developing countries,
thereby reducing teaching and learning inequality to some degree. In terms of EE, the
proposed solution provides the ideal platform to foster entrepreneurship in those parts of the
world that are in most need of improving living standards and wealth creation. In developing
countries it could become a driver for socio-economic growth and development as more
entrepreneurs will find it possible and affordable to access top-quality EE (Chizari et al., 2010).
In the last instance (establishing partnerships), to roll out the proposed solution would
necessitate the utilisation of resources and partnerships from all over the world to create and
share discipline knowledge, which is an in-built cornerstone of the proposed solution. Hence it Disruptive
would be meeting the four relevant SDGs of the United Nations. model for higher
Meeting the criteria of frugality
education
Having earlier identified the attributes of frugal innovation (Weyrauch and Herstatt, 2016), we programs
next provide evidence of the characteristics of the proposed solution that meet these attributes.
The requirement of focusing on core functionalities while reducing non-core features has
been met because Course Coordinators will only choose those content modules from the 135
comprehensive learning repository that they deem relevant and important to their courses.
Furthermore, the implication for students is that all the learning content made available to them
is relevant to their learning – nothing is “not important” or not relevant. This design aspect
represents a reduction in waste and stands in stark contrast to the situation with textbooks
where students pay for the whole book but often only utilise a fraction of the material.
Focusing on reducing total cost of ownership, HEIs that become subscribers to the service
stand to incur significant operational cost savings through lesser use of real estate (lecture
rooms), employing fewer teaching staff, achieving greater efficiency among teaching staff
(e.g. in terms of lecture/tutorial preparation and delivery) and reduction in administrative
overhead (e.g. simplified timetabling).
In line with the principle of achieving greater resource efficiency, students will know that
every learning activity has been designed with a specific objective and outcome in mind,
following best practices in online learning. Their time is optimised as they no longer need to
travel to attend lectures – instead, they can study at a time and place that is convenient to them.
For EE, Table A1 in the Appendix lists several ways in which this approach frees up the time of
the educator to enable deeper forms of learning to occur through closer and more meaningful
interaction with students. Time savings accrue from educators spending less time searching for
appropriate content, conducting lectures and developing curricula – all of which are seamlessly
facilitated through the platform. Mentoring is of particular importance in EE, which is an area
that is currently lacking. Upon questioning their entrepreneurship students,  Asvoll and
Jacobsen (2012) found a huge demand for more mentoring and coaching from experienced
business people. Students believe this will help them improve both opportunity validation and
exploitation. Having more free time will enable professors who lack business experience to build
and exploit mentor networks and incorporate mentorship and related practices in their research.
Adapting these resources into EE curricula will facilitate time and energy for scholars to
further embrace the scholarship of learning and teaching (Neck and Corbett, 2018), with
specific inference on a unified approach to value creation in EE, inclusive of the authentic
development of value for oneself and others (Jones et al., 2020).

Conclusion and future directions

In this paper we describe the outcomes of a Design Thinking project of which the objective
was to conceptually transform the teaching and learning model for academic disciplines in
higher education, utilizing digital technologies.
We have demonstrated project outcome with an MVP designed specifically for EE but
suggest that it could potentially be adapted for use by other academic disciplines. The
proposed solution is disruptive because we argue that a smaller entity with fewer resources,
such as a technology startup, could potentially challenge established incumbent businesses
such as HEIs (Christensen et al., 2015) and render their EE models obsolete.
Given the current state of our MVP, we believe there is an opportunity for researchers,
scholars and practitioners to further develop, refine and validate the solution and eventually
design and implement a business model to effectively capitalise on it. Other opportunities for
future research include the application of value segregation and value creation, not only by
participants and students but co-creation of value by educators. This will not only provide
ET context to innovative and emerging pedagogies but enhancement of the scholarship of
64,1 learning and teaching of entrepreneurship (Neck and Corbett, 2018; Jones et al., 2020).
A limitation of our study is that we carried out limited testing of assumptions. One is
reminded that for wicked problems, there is no ultimate test of the validity of any solution
(Coyne, 2005). We acknowledge that the proposed solution was achieved through a unique
way of looking at problems and finding solutions (Buchanan, 1992), hence other design teams
may well be arriving at different solutions.
136 The commercialisation of innovation as proposed here is likely to require collaboration
among multiple actors. Speculating on the likelihood of public or private candidates
transforming the industry, Srivastava et al. (2012) use the Transformer model to speculate on
the chances of disruptive innovation emanating from within the HEI sector. The Transformer
model lays out hugely important collaboration and implementation principles that are required
to bring change at the scale and level that we propose in this paper. Ultimately, Srivastava et al.
believe that universities are very unlikely to implement disruptive models due to their inherent
inability to overcome potential “role discrepancies”. Instead, they argue that:
The transformer model will be led by private providers and new entrants, not incumbent public
universities. This level of ‘disruption’ is hard to lead from the inside. However, savvy public institutions
will seek opportunities to create value in this space in partnership with public providers and new
entrants.
Private providers and new entrants will carve out new positions in the traditional sector and also
create new market spaces that merge parts of the higher education sector with other sectors, such as
media, technology, innovation, venture capital and the like. This will create new markets, new
segments and new sources of economic value.
Hence, we conclude that to successfully implement a disruptive business model of this nature
will require considerable alignment among different industry players and collaboration at the
highest level.
Universities will be compelled to create new, leaner business models as competition increases for
staff, students, funding and partners. Private institutions will exploit profitable market niches, while
others will create new markets and sources of value; for example, by specialising in select parts of the
education value chain (Srivastava et al., 2012).

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Appendix
Value propositions

Solution features Benefits (Pain Relievers and Gain Creators)

Up-to-date content provided by renowned experts in
the field, conveniently provided in one place
A flipped classroom that keeps students accountable
for their own learning by revealing key indicators to
course coordinators
Modular content on a comprehensive set of discipline
topics
Sample curricula
Each module consists of a variety of teaching
techniques
State-of-the-art L&T technologies
Alternative exercises/cases/examples
Dashboards that run key indicators on course design
e.g. total credit points and estimated time for
completion
Discussion questions/proposed activities for
workshops and model solutions
Course wizard
Linking each academic topic with summaries of latest
Table A1. research findings
Mapping of solution
features to benefits for
EDUCATORS
I don’t have to worry about finding appropriate
content for my course. Instead, I can concentrate my
efforts on providing value to my students where it
really matters – helping them apply their learning in
various contexts
This allows me to make more efficient use of my time.
I don’t have to prepare lectures or look for new
content, neither do I have to deliver repeat lectures.
At the start of each workshop I will know exactly
what level of learning has taken place for each
student, so I can manage workshop activity
accordingly
I can tailor-design the content of my course to meet
the course learning outcomes. Only the content that I
hand-pick is included in my course
Makes it easy for me to design my curriculum
I don’t have to be concerned about not catering to
different students’ learning styles
I don’t have to be a technology expert to implement
L&T technologies
I can pick the most appropriate exercises/cases/
examples
This allows me to design curricula that have realistic
time and credit characteristics
I don’t have to design workshop content. Instead, I
can focus on providing the necessary support as
needed. More efficient use of my time
When designing a new course, the wizard is an
excellent tool that makes things a lot easier
I don’t have to go searching for the latest
developments in research on each of the topics in my
course. This feature is a great PD tool for me too as it
constantly updates me! it is also a very effective way
for me to share my own research with students
Solution features
Each module is compiled by experts in
the field
Real-time indicators of performance
(quiz results and advice)
Real-time indicator of progress (%
completed)
Standardised format of weekly sessions
Flipped classroom
Comprehensive online content; no
textbooks required
Highly interactive content
Individual student reports to course
coordinator
All lecture content is online
Benefits (Pain Relievers and Gain Creators)
Disruptive
model for higher
I get to learn from the best people in this discipline education
I receive formative feedback on my performance to date, so I know programs
where to improve
I can effectively plan and schedule my study load
139
I know exactly where to find resources and I know exactly what to
do. I love the consistency
I appreciate that I can cover the theory and preparation part of this
course in my own time and at a place of my convenience. I don’t
have to attend what can often be boring lectures
This is a huge cost saver over the course of my studies. I no longer
must carry heavy textbooks with me
I am so much better engaged with the subject
Because of this I am better prepared for my workshops as I know
my tutor knows exactly how much I have prepared. I don’t want to Table A2.
be embarrassed, so I prepare well Mapping of solution
If I struggle with some concepts, I can simply repeat the video features to benefits for
lecture on the topic or re-visit the section online STUDENTS

Solution features Benefits (Pain Relievers and Gain Creators)

100% outsourced course content in
combination with flipped classroom
The same content available to all HEIs in
the industry
Content created by discipline experts
Content editors that maintain discipline
quality standards
Subscription model offered to HEIs across
the globe
Huge cost savings in terms of lecture preparation and delivery.
Freeing up lecture rooms – further cost savings. Simplified
timetabling. Faculty can spend more time on research
We can differentiate ourselves regarding the type of student
support we provide through applied student learning. The
quality of teaching staff we employ is now the differentiating
factor
Our best Educators will strive to become Content Creators,
which is something we encourage
Confidence that the content is of the highest international Table A3.
standard Mapping of solution
For first-mover university: Establishing a new revenue stream features to benefits
that is highly scalable and profitable for HEIs

Solution features Benefits (Gain Creators)

Very sophisticated CMS
Content Creator Admin
system
The CILS Royalty-earning
Model
The ability to create and publish professional content in a seamless way
Can obtain detailed reports of student use of Content Chunks, royalties earned,
student ratings of Content Chunks, and performance indicators Table A4.
Highly beneficial income stream from world-wide audience; much more Mapping of solution
profitable than authoring conventional textbooks; it is highly prestigious to be a features to benefits for
Content provider as it is an acknowledgement of Educator achievement in CONTENT
subject discipline CREATORS
ET About the authors
Dr Gerrit Anton de Waal is a Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at RMIT University in
64,1 Melbourne, Australia. His research interests include innovation management and education of
innovators and entrepreneurs. He has published in a range of leading international journals, including
R&D Management, IEEE Transactions for Engineering Management and Journal of Engineering and
Technology Management. Gerrit Anton de Waal is the corresponding author and can be contacted at:
gerrit.dewaal@rmit.edu.au
140 Professor Alex Maritz is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at the La Trobe Business School,
Melbourne, Australia. His research interests include the scholarship of entrepreneurship education and
contemporary issues of minority entrepreneurship (such as senior entrepreneurship and indigenous
entrepreneurship). He has published in a range of leading international journals, including
Education þ Training and the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research.

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