Page 45 - Transforming an Idea Into a Business with Design Thinking

24 ◾ Transforming an Idea Into a Business with Design Thinking

Using the “Template 2 Stakeholders Map,” identify all the core, direct and
indirect stakeholders for your idea.

3.1.1 Target Stakeholders

Target stakeholders are the primary beneficiaries of your idea. Identify mini-
mum of one and maximum of three core stakeholders who will also be the
users of your solution.

3.1.2 Connected Stakeholders

Connected stakeholders are all the stakeholders who are connected to the
target users and are thereby directly influencing or being influenced by your
target users in the context of your idea. These are also the stakeholders who
might be paying or helping implement the solution that you’ll be envision-
ing. Note that in many cases, the one who pays for the solution may not
necessarily be the one who uses it. And the one who implements the solu-
tion may be a totally different person.

3.1.3 Influenced Stakeholders

Influenced stakeholders are all other identified stakeholders who influence or
are indirectly influenced by your target users or connected stakeholders. The
reason to think of all the connected and influenced stakeholders is to have
an exploratory approach to the problem space and not look at the problem
space only through the narrow lens of identified target stakeholders.

3.1.4 Stakeholder Template (Figure 3.1)

Here is one example of stakeholders if your problem statement is:

How might we enable stay-at-home moms who love cooking to sell their
cuisines to working professionals who do not have time to cook and wish
to eat home-cooked meals? (Figure 3.2)

In this case, target stakeholders could be stay-at-home moms, aunts,
dads, grandparents and working professionals.

Connected stakeholders could be family members, neighbors for the cook
and co-workers for the working professionals.