Tech Futures Lab
Teaching Masters students in Applied Innovation
The Work:
Tech Futures Lab offer a Masters in Applied Innovation programme. This requires students to develop up their own idea, using emerging disruptive technologies to solve big world problems, as if they were a StartUp. I run a series of workshops in Design Thinking techniques covering:
‘Discovering Your Why’ - unlocking your personal potential.
Market Validation - scoping the market and understanding the market opportunity.
Customer Research – qualitative interviewing, focus groups and surveying.
Ideation, prototyping and user testing.
Building the componentry for powerful value propositions.
Business Models – how to monetise and operationalise effectively.
Building a powerful brand, UX and calibrating your Marketing mix.
Systems Thinking – using systems techniques to better unlock design opportunities.
Melissa has also been an ongoing expert advisor and coach working with individuals and smaller groups in the development and commercialisation of their ideas, and have been part of the judging panel in their assessments (she no longer does this part given time constraints).
“Melissa is calm, thoughtful and considered. She’s a holistic thinker. She can combine what are typically thought of as 'fluffy' concepts with quite a 'hard' edge of frameworks and outputs – it’s magic combo. She provides our students with a way to see, to move through the complexity and observe a system. Her frameworks help give order to the disorder and gets people unstuck. This is the key to momentum - forward motion. It's awesome! “
— Sarah Hindle, General Manager, Tech Futures Lab
