Idea Journals based on SCAMPER technique

In our course this semester at ZSEM, we are teaching entrepreneurship with many hands on elements. One of the graded elements is an idea journal which simply enough tasks each student with identifying and industry subsector of their interest and concentrating on developing ideas around a related product or service theme to explore opportunities for their own potential business.  This exercise gives the students alot of choice.  Freedom to choose industry, subsector, product or service in additon to style.  The students can choose whether to approach the idea journal through a D-I-Y medium or aided by technology using a variety of blog platforms including this one, blogger.

The journal is worth 10% of the grade in the course and the students will learn how to use the creative technique SCAMPER to really investigate one focused theme.  Therefore each letter will then create one entry which will include both visual example (from simple Google Image searches) with supplemental text where the student writes down a story about how this image addresses the questions linked to each of the letters (S-for substitute and so on...).  But alas, SCAMPER is only 7 letters so there are some additional entries the about portion of the blog should inform any reader from class or stumbling upon their blog why it was created, when and by whom.  Then there should be the 7 SCAMPER based entry #8 which should focus on using any other creative technique to explore the idea from those we learned in class (Random Input, Forced Relationships, Storyboarding, Mindmapping,etc) and then #9 should be an actual prototype of a product you could develop.

The assignments are due for online versions by 10.10.2014. So for visitors to this blog, you can check back after then to see some of the examples of student work.  Over the next 2 days, I will be posting my own online Idea Journal blog as an example for the students.  My offline version will be photographed and uploaded here as well.