Abstract
Potential design entrepreneurs often have to apply approaches that incorporate a clear business
strategy through product design. Designers are however not primarily trained to design business
strategies and often have to be pre-incubated in order to prepare them for business start-up. This
paper proposes an approach relevant to pre-incubate potential design entrepreneurs so that they
become more entrepreneurial during the practice led design process, yet still apply the cornerstone
of design thinking namely empathy. The argument is made that creative analysis, creative
synthesis and creative evaluation are phases in the design process that can be supported by the
Empathy Map to enhance Entrepreneurial Orientation and business strategy. We recommend that
the approach is used to facilitate feasible products/services, a business strategy and empowered
entrepreneurial designers who are able to calculate risk bearing in mind multiple design
perspectives. The recommendations from this paper is proposed for any environment relating to
pre-incubation of practice led design entrepreneurs.