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How To Use Design Thinking To Ramp Up Your Side Hustle

Reed aka Samuel Reed
8 min readNov 8, 2020

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Photo by Gautam Lakum on Unsplash

It’s no news to see educators, nurses, or typical 9–5 workers having a side hustle to earn extra cash in this economy. There are so many opportunities abound to generate multiple streams of income — we are surrounded by so many problems, creating opportunities for those who can develop innovative solutions.

As a full-time worker or a gig worker, you need to view your side hustle as a worthy venture that allows you to nurture your passion and interests while generating additional revenue efficiently. You need to focus your effort, time, and money on your side hustle to make it viable and ensure viable cashflow.

Various tools can help your side hustle, and one of the most consistent and reliable tools is Design Thinking. Design thinking is not an exclusive concept for designers as great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it for years.

What’s unique about Design Thinking is that this work process can systematically extract, teach, learn, and apply human-centered techniques to solve problems creatively and innovatively in our schools, businesses, projects, and lives. It is no wonder that some of the world’s leading brands, like Google, Nike, Apple, and Samsung, have adopted the Design Thinking approach. It’s also a popular program at leading universities including Stanford and Harvard. At the U School, where I teach, we leverage the design process to develop curriculum and educational opportunities for our students. But you may be wondering what design thinking is and why is it so popular? Let’s dive right in.

What Is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is the cognitive, strategic, and practical process by which design concepts come to life. It is associated with prescriptions for the innovation of products and services within business and social contexts. It is an iterative process used to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems to find other solutions that might not be apparent or seem like the obvious solution; essentially, it provides a solution-based approach to solving problems.

In simple terms, Design Thinking is the approach of creating innovative solutions by thinking from the perspective of a user or customer taking into

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Reed aka Samuel Reed
Reed aka Samuel Reed

Written by Reed aka Samuel Reed

Samuel Reed, is an accomplished Teacherpreneur and Business Coach with more than 25 years of success across education and workforce development industries.

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