All posts by Banque du Liban Accelerate

Design Thinking

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Design Thinking

Design thinking is a methodology employing unique and creative techniques to solve complex problems and find desirable solutions. Traditionally, design thinking was considered as a method only used by designers; however, it is applicable to anything to create innovative ideas as well as to solve problems.

Design thinking is not limited to a specific industry or an area of expertise. Businesses and organizations use the design thinking method to solve existing problems they have and to discover new opportunities. When used effectively, design thinking can drive a brand or business forward. Many large corporations around the world have been adopting design thinking as an approach to innovation to all areas of their businesses. It is through this approach that corporate cultures have been creating innovative cultures. GE, Apple, and Citrix are only a few of the global players to adopt design thinking, and in the region RTA in Dubai has also welcomed design thinking into their corporate culture.

The design thinking process consists of 5 steps:

  1. Empathize: Understand the demographic for whom you are designing and their user experience. This is done through observing, interacting, and immersing yourself in their experiences. Utilize the knowledge as your foundation to begin addressing the challenge.
  1. Define: In this phase, process and synthesize the findings from the first phase to form the blueprint to make the changes that will address the design to impact the user experience.
  1. Ideate: Once you have understood your target, a critical component of design thinking is to brainstorm and explore several different ideas. This phase is all about creativity and fun and a myriad of ideas is encouraged whether savvy, risky, wishful, or dreamy.
  1. Prototype: During the prototype phase, the ideas are transformed into a physical form so that you can experience and interact with them. Ideas may fail at this stage, but it is better to fail early and often in order to succeed.
  1. Test: Testing is an essential part of the process because it provides observations and feedback to refine the prototype. This is when more is learnt about the user and about what does and does not work to modify the prototype and the original point of view developed during the empathy phase.

It is through creating and testing ideas that businesses continue to learn and develop their offerings while being customer centric. At the BDL Accelerate 2015 Reimagine Lebanon workshops, we will be using the design thinking methodology to generate ideas to create relevant solutions for Lebanon. The process will provide and assist the attendees to understand, create, think, and implement their ideas.

Paul Papadimitriou – Intelligencr

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Paul Papadimitriou
Intelligencr, Founder

A true citizen of the world, Paul Papadimitriou is a digital futurist and a management consultant. He is the founder of Intelligencr, an innovation scouting firm he started in Tokyo in 2008. Paul started off at a young age in 1996 developing websites to pay for his studies. In 2000, Paul’s career took off when he joined the company that created the first public WAP portal prior to joining the Geneva Business Federation. In 2008, Paul moved to Japan where he started Driving Left, a digital business development company and started co-organizing several communities during his stay there. In 2009, Paul moved to Europe but continues to commute between there and Japan to continue his duties.

Paul is an expert on the emerging digital revolution and how it transforms businesses and societies. He travels the world researching world trends, witnessing new identities and behaviors being created, how different cultures shape innovation and how innovation and technology are impacting societies. The accumulated intelligence is delivered to his clients to guide them through the opportunities and challenges of innovation and to better understand the gap between online and offline behaviors. As an innovation scouter, Paul keeps an eye out for startups around the world that redefine innovation and add value to the digital world and advises them on how to understand the ever-changing ecosystem.

With a busy schedule like Paul’s, it is hard to understand how he also manages to find the time to produce and host a weekly video series on digital innovation, The Digital Loop that he also founded in 2013, in addition to founding Layovers in 2014 that specializes in aviation innovation. Paul also manages to travel to 4 continents as a keynote speaker!

A citizen of the world, a digital futurist, a lobbyist, a management consultant, and a keynote speaker, Paul will surely provide us with a wealth of knowledge of the digital industry.

Watch his keynote at BDL Accelerate 2014 on innovation in emerging markets:

Idea Stage Startup Competition Deadline Extended!

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Due to the overwhelming response we have received from interested participants in the Idea Stage Startup Competition, we have decided to extend the deadline to apply. The new dates are as follows:

Application deadline: November 1st
Announcing Selected Applicants: November 2nd
Weekly workshops: November 3rd until November 27th
Final Pitch and Awards: At BDL Accelerate 2015 on December 11th

About Idea Stage Startup Competition:
Aspiring to educate and inspire youth, Banque du Liban is hosting an Idea Stage Startup workshop series and competition themed Reimagining Lebanon. Inspired by youth driving change in Lebanon, the series of design-thinking workshops offered by SETT, a think tank focused on enabling emerging startup companies, is going to empower applicants with the entrepreneurial skills to develop solutions for a better Lebanon.

Reimagining Lebanon will feature a series of weekly workshops over the span of 5 weeks. Applicants will be assembled into 8 teams of 3 with diverse but complementary backgrounds, to develop a startup idea to address a problem that will be assigned to them. The participating teams will pitch their ideas to a panel of judges in front of an audience during Banque du Liban Accelerate 2015 for the chance to win 5,000 USD. To be eligible, one may be of any age and background with the will to learn new methods of thought and passionately wants to create an impact in their community.

Applications for the Idea Stage Startup Competition are currently open until November 1st and the teams will be selected on November 2ndth. The selected teams will have to attend one workshop per week for 3 hours.

This is an opportunity that anyone can take and learn innovative skills.

To learn more about this rare opportunity and participate in this experience, click here 

 

Jean Nehme – Touch Surgery

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Jean Nehme
Touch Surgery, Co-Founder

Jean Nehme, a returning speaker to BDL Accelerate, is a Plastic Surgeon and the Co-Founder of Touch Surgery, a game-changing mobile surgical simulator. Jean has been aiding surgeons to improve their skills while overcoming the challenges of being an entrepreneur.

When he and Andre Chow were still residents at the Imperial College London, they realized that they lacked additional experience outside of the operating room. Surgical simulators already existed but were not within reach, as they were expensive and stored away from the residents. This is how the two friends came up with the idea for Touch Surgery. Surgeons around the world have free access to this tool that would help them be better prepared for their patients.

This simulator is as close to real life as it gets: Filled with accurate surgical content, it shows users what could happen during actual operations. Because it prepares students to all kinds of scenarios, Touch Surgery has considerably improved the way they are taught, and the quality of their surgery. The app gathers the latest surgical procedures from the best institutions, and allows medical students to feel more confident before entering the operating room.

Surprisingly, patients who want to understand a procedure before they go under the knife are also downloading Touch Surgery, marking a true revolution in the surgical world for all parties involved.

With Touch Surgery, Jean Nehme has played a vital role in transforming the medical world we know through a digital innovation that enhances doctors’ surgical skills, prepares trainees for the operating room, and educates patients. Touch Surgery is truly an app that has exceptional promise for changing the future of surgeries.

You can watch Jean Nehme and other Lebanese entrepreneurs share their startup success stories at BDL Accelerate 2014:

 

Are Unicorn Startups Too Good To Be True?

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Unicorn is a term that was recently introduced in the venture capital industry. The term denotes startup companies that have soared to $1 billion valuation or higher.  Just like unicorns, the billion-dollar startup was once considered a myth because it was so exceedingly rare for a startup to be worth a billion dollars. Today there are over a hundred startup companies valued over $1 billion.

According to CBS Insights, there is a total of 142 unicorn companies with a cumulative value of $506 billion. Moreover, CBS Insights in collaboration with The New York Times have predicted 50 future unicorn companies. The list of unicorn companies comprises companies such as Uber, Snapchat, Airbnb, Pinterest, Dropbox, Spotify, and Jawbone to list just a few.

The list of unicorn companies has been growing at a rapid pace, almost doubling within 2015. This proliferation of unicorns has many concerned that it is a sign of a tech bubble that is ready to burst. The investors and observers who believe that a tech bubble burst is imminent point towards companies they consider to be unreasonably over-valued, such as Uber, currently valued at $51 billion, apparently a higher valuation than the entire global taxi market. They state that low interest rates have pushed more money into venture capital investment creating a false sense of security.

However, many argue that what we are witnessing is actually a tech boom and these valuations are justified although tech stocks are at an all-time high, and startup valuations are hitting astounding numbers. They believe that these companies may be temporarily overvalued, but they have real revenues and the economies worldwide are shifting in their direction, taking into account the surge of the number of people connected to the Internet that increased from 450 million people in 2000 to 3 billion people in 2014 and the mobile revolution. They state that when you view these high-growth startups as a long-term portfolio, it is evident that there is no impending danger or risk of burst.

The question remains, are unicorns no longer a magical occurrence or are we witnessing a unicorn bubble?