Entrepreneurs think and act as designers; both are motivated to create something for a purpose. However, the idea that entrepreneurs perform as designers requires a change in the way business schools handle design thinking, in particular, its cognitive aspect. With this goal in mind, we developed a teaching and learning experience to entrepreneurship education grounded in game-based learning and design thinking. Our experiential learning activity built upon our game, Entrepreneurial Thinking, embodies gameplay and game design to engage learners and mediate the learning process towards entrepreneurial decision-making, systems and design thinking. Our session will be organized into three distinctive parts. First, the attendees will play a light version of our board game to gain an introductory experience in entrepreneurship. Then, the participants will be invited to redesign the game they just played and to apply various other businesses perspectives and/or game mechanics to the original design. Finally, we will have conversations about how the concepts learned in the game as well as in the activities of playing and redesigning the game can be applied in their contexts. At the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Understand how to promote cognitive aspects of design thinking in class.
- Create an experiential and ludic activity to support design thinking.
- Comprehend the importance of the systems thinking in entrepreneurial learning.
This session is a practical experience for participants in any field who are interested in promoting an innovative pedagogy in class since entrepreneurial skills, design thinking and experiential learning do not apply only in business contexts.