I learned to be a designer in design school and during my master’s I learned to also be a design researcher. But I never learned to be an entrepreneur from anyone else but myself.
Much of design school is like a playground and discussions are design- and process-related. At best you will talk about how your design work relates to yourself and the future, but not to your entrepreneurial plans as that is seen as something not belonging to school. I think there needs to be a redressing of the balance where the ‘hard world’ of design as embedded in a larger world driven by economic and social capital, as opposed to the design that looks and functions best, and gets best results from user research.
There is a big difference between a potential target group corresponding well and them actually becoming part of the new market you envisioned in the economy. Having key business executives and investors coming into design schools is crucial to expand students’ design projects and will make them more enthusiastic to present their designs not just as good designs (it is underestimated how good people not trained at design are becoming at design) to a design jury but also pitching them as value propositions to a jury of investors. One of the greatest opportunities for designers is to learn to see and pitch design as value for business strategies.