Purpose – Ever since Sarasvathy’s (2001) seminal article, scholars have sought to test effectuation’s affect on firm performance. Although recent work has begun the arduous process of testing effectuation’s effect on entrepreneurial performance, there is still much to learn about its impact on firm performance. One such area is the relationship between effectuation and innovation. The purpose of this paper is to first, propose a scale suitable to the explication of the effectuation construct relative to innovation. Second, it proposes a more parsimonious scale for the measurement of innovation. Third, these scales are tested relative to firm performance. Design/methodology/approach – This paper develops and tests a structural model, which investigates aspects of effectuation as mediators between innovation orientation and product/service innovation. This is accomplished using a sample of 169 electronic product manufacturing-based small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Subjective measures of performance are used as the dependent variable. Findings – The three most widely used measures of innovativeness were found to break cleanly into two sub-constructs, namely innovation orientation and product/service innovation. Effectuation measures included means (who I know), leverage contingencies (experimentation), pre-commitments and affordable loss. Means and leverage contingencies were found to positively mediate innovation orientation and product/service innovation leading to increased firm performance. Affordable loss did not show a mediating role, but had a direct effect on firm performance. Research limitations/implications – This study establishes two distinct sub-constructs of firm-level innovation; namely innovation orientation and product/service innovation. Second, by testing an innovation-centric effectuation model, this research establishes an empirical relationship between effectuation, innovation and firm performance. Practical implications – Practical implications include establishing a relationship between means, leverage contingencies and innovation-performance, indicating that the ways through which small and medium-sized enterprises use their innovation networks may affect innovation outcomes and ultimately firm performance. Originality/value – This research establishes an empirical relationship between effectuation, innovation and firm performance, extending effectuation theory from the entrepreneurship to the innovation literature.

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In a world where halting climate breakdown is becoming more and more urgent by the minute, so too does the media industry need to deliver its contribution to change. Especially since innovation - a carrier of change - is seen as one of the main pillars of this field. Even more since anthropocentrism – a mind-set of particular harm towards the current Earth crisis – still seems to prevail this pillar. In an ambition to contribute to the urgent and necessary need to halt climate breakdown, this research delves into design thinking, one of the currently popular and established innovation processes, and investigates how it can become non-anthropocentric. Insights are drawn from observations and interviews with several designers who have engaged in the journey to move themselves, their practise and their results towards non-anthropocentrism. Analysing these, it becomes clear that non- anthropocentric design is about embodying an entanglement of species. This is achieved through understanding that we are entangled, by acting in collaboration with diverse fields and through being humble. Moreover, the paper suggests design thinking can become non-anthropocentric - shifting its focus from human to earthling needs - through thickening its current converging phases with speculative scenarios. These should highlight the additional needs of and implications for a diverse set of earthlings. In this manner the scenarios manifest the entanglement. The exercise is done best in collaboration with stakeholders from a diverse set of fields and with help from posthumanist perspectives, real-world entanglement examples, surprise and unifying language. Also, doing justice to the complexity of the entanglement and the challenging nature of this exercise, the scenarios need to be continuously re-evaluated. This demands design thinking to move away from its focus on processes within the scope of a project towards a focus on long-term service-based relationships within the scope of the on-going entanglement. Product-as-a-service business models could potentially make this viable. / Behovet av att lindra och minimera effekterna av klimatförändringarna blir allt tydligare för var dag som passerar. Medieindustrin måste bidra till omställningen av samhället. I synnerhet eftersom innovation – en pådrivare av förändring – ses som en av huvudpelarna inom medieindustrin. Innovation som en gren inom medieindustrin genomsyras dock av den antropocentriska världsbilden, en världsbild som anses bidra till de nuvarande miljökriserna. I ett försök att bidra till att minimera effekterna av klimatförändringarna dyker denna studie ner i ’design thinking’, en i stunden populär och etablerad innovationsprocess, för att undersöka hur denna kan bli icke antropocentrisk. Insikter hämtas från observationer och intervjuer med flertalet designers med erfarenhet av icke antropocentrisk världsbild inom designprocesser. Analys av dessa visar att icke antropocentrisk design handlar om att förkroppsliga en väv av olika arter. Det uppnås genom en förståelse för att vi är en komplex väv, genom att agera tillsammans med olika aktörer och genom att vara ödmjuk. Vidare föreslår artikeln att ”design thinking” kan bli icke antropocentrisk dvs skifta fokus från mänskliga behov till ’earthling’-behov genom att kontextualisera de konvergerande faserna i ’design thinking’ med spekulativa scenarier. Dessa scenarier borde visa på behov och implikationer för många olika ’earthlings’. På så vis manifesteras väven av dessa scenarier. Denna handling lämpar sig bäst i samarbete med andra aktörer från många olika discipliner och med hjälp från posthumanistiska perspektiv, verkliga exempel på komplexiteten och sambanden inom väven, överraskning och ett enande språkbruk. De olika scenarierna måste konstant omvärderas för att göra vävens komplexitet och den utmanande karaktären av handlingen rättvisa. Detta kräver att ’design thinking’ fokuserar på långsiktiga serviceorienterade relationer inom ramen för väven istället för att fokusera på processer inom ramen för specifika projekt. ’Product-as-a-service’ affärsmodell skulle potentiellt kunna göra detta genomförbart.

Canadian university sports are gaining momentum as a high-performance sports culture, leading to greater demands and potential mental health (MH) risks for student-athletes. Despite the abundance of research and resources pertaining to MH, student-athletes continue to experience significant MH challenges. This thesis aimed to reimagine student-athlete MH support at a Canadian university using a Design Thinking (DT) approach. This was achieved through a case study about the University of Ottawa (uOttawa) Gee-Gees. DT is a creative and collaborative approach to understanding your end-users, challenging assumptions, and redefining problems to create innovative solutions you can prototype and test (Brown, 2008). The methodological framework was inspired by Hasso Plattner Institute’s (2018) six-step model: 1) understand, 2) observe, 3) point of view, 4) ideate, 5) prototype, and 6) test. This study explicitly engages in the first three steps of the HPI process, otherwise known as the “Compassion space” (Chambers, 2021). Findings from each step are presented through two journal articles and used to inform future research dedicated to the remaining three steps (“Solution space”; HPI, 2018). Article one focuses on the “Understand” phase, aimed to generate ecological insights from multiple stakeholders into how the varsity sports department at uOttawa supports student-athlete MH. Three activities were conducted incrementally, including stakeholder mapping (to identify relevant stakeholders), stakeholder analysis (to prioritize stakeholder engagement), and enabler interviews (to understand diverse perspectives on the explored topic). Nine enabler interviews were conducted and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings are presented through three themes: Enhancing the accessibility of MH services, providing proactive and holistic care, and building a sustainable integrated support team model. This case helps illustrate the varsity environment as one interconnected system and demonstrates the shared responsibility of all enablers to promote and protect positive MH. Article Two encompasses two HPI phases. First, the “Observe” phase is to observe the daily realities of uOttawa student-athletes in their localized varsity sports environment. To facilitate this, six digital stories were produced by student-athletes and analyzed using empathy mapping (i.e., interpreting what a person says, thinks, feels, and does). Individual empathy maps informed the subsequent “Point of View” phase, designed to establish a point of view from a student athlete's perspective and present the findings creatively and in an easily digestible manner. Six empathy maps were condensed into three fictional personas that help illustrate student-athlete experiences at uOttawa. Presenting these personable stories to relevant stakeholders will be beneficial to garnering deeper empathy and compassion for student-athletes experiencing MH challenges. The results of each phase yield a comprehensive understanding of student-athletes’ needs, experiences, and the environment in which they compete and study. Thereby contributing to the design of a (future) desirable, viable, and feasible solution the varsity sports department can implement. Moreover, supplementary methods and results are outlined to showcase the interdisciplinary collaborative approach used to understand further the uOttawa Gee-Gees high-performance integrated support team (IST), a crucial component for understanding the uOttawa’s varsity sports landscape. This thesis addresses new ways to explore student-athlete MH, contributes a Canadian perspective to student-athlete research, and paves the way for DT in the sports psychology field.

Syftet med denna undersökning är att undersöka hur cirkulär design kan bidra till en hållbar konsumtion inom förpackningsdesign. Frågorna var hur kan man skifta fokus från linjär till cirkulär design? Hur förhåller sig ett urval människor till hållbart konsumtion? Hur ser ett urval människors vardagliga konsumtion ut? Denna studie blev utformad kring tre metodistiska moment. Det första momentet gick ut på att se på design utifrån ett  “design thinking”-metodiskt perspektiv. Denna följs sedan av två kompletterande metodansatser, det vill säga de kvalitativa samtalsintervjuerna och de kvalitativa etnografiska observationerna. För att kunna applicera design thinking metodiken på ett verklighetsbaserat exempel så används Jordans “Green Clean Toothbrush.”I samtalsintervjuerna så användes en intervjuguide för att strukturera upp intervjuerna. I de etnografiska observationsstudierna så användes bilder användes som visual research för att skildra hur ett urval respondenternas vardagliga konsumtion egentligen såg ut.

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Even though disciplines that are not traditionally affiliated with design have started to show interest in design thinking such as business, education, healthcare, engineering, and IT (Clark and Smith, 2008; Cross, 2007, 2011; Dorst, 2011; Finn Connell, 2013; Lawson, 2004, 2006; Owen, 2007; Razzouk and Shute, 2012) design thinking studies has tended to focus on limited design disciplines such as architecture, engineering design, and industrial design and there are not enough studies to prove that designers in different design fields perform design processes as design thinking literature proposed (Kimbell, 2011). This qualitative study explores the design process of professionals from different design disciplines, in order to understand the similarities and differences between their process and the design activities proposed by the design thinking literature. Design strategies of experts from different design disciplines were studied and compared, in relation to the activities proposed by the design thinking literature. This basic qualitative study was designed to use semi-structured interviews as the qualitative method of inquiry. This study employed purposeful sampling, specifically criterion sampling and snowball sampling methods. The researcher interviewed nine designers from instructional design, fashion design, and game design fields. A semi-structured interview protocol was developed and participants were asked demographic questions, opinion and values questions, and ideal position questions. Demographic questions provided background information such as education and number of years of design experience for the participants. Opinion and value questions were asked to learn what participants think about the research questions. Ideal position questions let participants describe what good design would be. The researcher analyzed the interview data and the results were reported in a way to demonstrate the differences and similarities within and across disciplines. / Ph. D.

Design thinking ability is vital for engineers who are tasked with solving society's toughest sustainable development challenges. Prior research identified that the percentage of design thinkers among freshmen engineering students is greater than the percentage among the general population. However, engineering education's lack of attention to fostering creative ability may cause the design thinking ability of senior engineering students to suffer. The research addressed in this thesis compares the design thinking ability of engineering students across age groups, and compares design thinking ability between the design disciplines of engineering and architecture. To draw design thinking comparisons between these groups, a survey with a nine item design thinking instrument was distributed nationally to freshmen engineering students (n= 2,158), senior engineering students (n= 1,893), and senior architecture students (n= 336). The survey instrument was validated by conducting confirmatory factor analysis on the senior engineering and senior architecture samples' data. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test was utilized to statistically compare scores across sample groups. Both the freshmen engineering students (2.80) and senior architecture students (3.30) scored significantly higher on the design thinking scale than senior engineering students (2.59). These results have important implications for engineering educators as engineering education may contribute to a decrease in design thinking among senior engineering students. A lower design thinking score among seniors was consistent across all engineering sub-disciplines and should be of concern to engineering educators, since design thinking skills are critical for the development of engineering solutions to grand societal challenges. / Master of Science / Design thinking is a way of thinking about the design process which places the user at the center of the design. Thinking about design in this way is a vital ability for engineers and other design professionals to develop because it enables them to solve “wicked” problems like sustainable development challenges. Wicked problems are those which are difficult to solve due to the number of conflicting components involved. Prior research has found that design thinkers are more prevalent among engineering students in their first year of study than among students in other majors. However, engineering education does not attribute much attention to the development of creative ability which could cause the design thinking ability of engineering students in their final year of study to be worse than the ability of those in their first year, as well as worse than the ability of students who study other design disciplines like architecture. This study compared the design thinking abilities of engineering students in their final year of study to engineering students in their first year and to architecture students in their final year. The goal of making these comparisons was to explore if engineering education helps or hinders the development of design thinking. A survey with nine questions related to design thinking was distributed nationwide. The data from the survey was collected and statistically analyzed. The results showed that the design thinking ability of engineering students in their final year was significantly lower than the ability of first year engineering students and significantly lower than the ability of final year architecture students. A decrease in design thinking ability between freshmen and senior year must be addressed by engineering educators. The National Academy of Engineers and industry leaders are calling for the development of engineers who are design thinkers, and the results of this paper suggest that some changes may need to occur within the engineering education curriculum to accommodate this need.

Denna rapport redogör för det praktiska examensarbete som har inneburit en redesign av Birnas Trafikskolas webbplats. Webbplatsen var i behov av en ny design, struktur och innehåll. I detta arbete har designprocessen utförts utifrån ett användarcentrerat perspektiv baserat på design thinking. Arbetsprocessen har bestått av research kring användarna, prototyparbete, framtagande av en grafisk profil och genomförande av användartester. Utvecklingen av den nya webbplatsen har skett via CMS-verktyget Joomla samt med användning av HTML och CSS-kod. Resultatet av detta examensarbete presenteras i form av en webbplats med ny grafisk design och innehåll. / This report describes the practical thesis that entailed the redesign of Birnas driving school’s website. The website was in need of a new design, structure and content. In this work, the design process was carried out with a user-centered approach based on design thinking. The work process has consisted of user research, prototyping, the developement of a graphic profile, and user testing. The developement of the new site has been made through the content management system Joomla and the use of HTML and CSS code. The result of this thesis is presented in the form of a website with new graphic design and content.