A semester-long applied research & innovation partnership with Master 's-level business students at the Faculty of Business Administration, Prague University of Economics and Business (VŠE).
Do you have a real problem or opportunity your organization hasn’t had the time or capacity to explore properly?
Partner with the Design Thinking course, and a dedicated team of graduate students will spend a full semester researching it, generating concepts, and testing prototypes with real users, delivering findings you can act on.
I co-lead this course together with Mina Baginova, and we work with companies, NGOs, startups, and public institutions that want to bring an outside, research-grounded perspective to a challenge they’re facing.
What we offer
Your organization is matched with one dedicated team of 4–5 students, who work through all four phases of the design thinking process over a full semester:
- User research: Qualitative interviews, observation, and market analysis conducted directly by your team.
- Insight synthesis: Thematic analysis, opportunity mapping, and clear problem statements and „How Might We” questions grounded in real data.
- Concept development: Structured ideation and creative convergence to develop 1–2 promising concepts tailored to your specific challenge.
- Prototyping & testing: Hands-on lo-fi to mid-fi (vibe) prototyping and usability testing, giving you concrete evidence of what works before you invest further.
All four phases are delivered by one team, from research brief to tested concept, presented live to you at the end of the semester.
Students come from the Master in Management and CEMS Master in International Management programs – graduate-level business students, typically representing 3-4 nationalities per team. Each team is supported by a faculty facilitator throughout the semester, as well as by an industry mentor.
What partnering involves
Partnering takes a modest, well-defined time commitment spread across the semester:
- A challenge brief: a short 1–2 page description of the problem or opportunity you’d like to explore. We can help you write this if needed.
- A kick-off meeting: 30–45 minutes at the start of the semester for the team to meet you, ask questions, and align on scope.
- Access to users: students conduct at least 6 contextual interviews with people relevant to your challenge – customers, employees, or partners. You can help with recruitment, or students can recruit independently.
- An interim check-in: a 30-minute online session partway through the semester to hear early findings and give feedback that shapes the rest of the project.
- A final presentation: a 30-minute session at the end of the semester – a full presentation plus Q&A – where you receive the complete project and take home the slides.
In between, the workload on your side is light: students are self-directed and only reach out with occasional questions.
What you receive:
- Research findings: a structured presentation of all primary and secondary research, including desk research findings, interview insights, synthesized opportunity areas, user quotes, patterns, and a clear problem statement.
- Solution concepts: 1–2 concepts addressing your challenge, each with a rationale and a defined target user.
- Prototype & testing results: a lo-fi to mid-fi prototype and documented results from usability testing, including what worked, what didn’t, and recommended next steps.
We work with organizations across sectors,
and tailor the partnership to fit:
Corporate partners
Corporate partners can engage through a formal, fee-based partnership with the Department of Strategy, or at the broader Faculty level, which opens up additional access across FBA’s ~3,500 students, event partnerships, and more. Get in touch and I’ll walk you through the options and what fits your organization.
NGOs and public institutions
NGOs and public institutions can partner with the course directly, at no cost, as part of the department’s ongoing commitment to supporting civil society and mission-driven organizations with research and design capacity they might not otherwise have access to.
If you’re unsure which track fits, just reach out, and we’ll figure it out together.
Example challenges you could bring
Not sure what counts as a good project?
Here are the kinds of challenges that work well:
„We’re about to invest in a new product, service, or feature, and we don’t really know the people we’re building it for”.
→ Discovery Research
Understanding an underserved customer or user segment before you commit.
„We want to understand what it’s really like to be one of our customers because we can’t see it from the inside”.
→ Experience Research
Exploring the experience of a specific group to uncover needs that don’t show up in the data you already have.
„We have an idea, but we don’t know if it’s actually worth pursuing”.
→ Idea Validation
Testing demand for a new business model, product, or service before committing real resources to it.
„Something we built isn’t landing with people the way we expected, and we don’t know why.”
→ Evaluative Research
Understanding why a target audience isn’t engaging with a product or service as intended.
Ready to partner?
If your organization has a challenge worth exploring, I’d love to hear about it.
Email me: karolina.kania@vse.cz