The Development of New Website for Entrepreneurship Education: Understanding User Requirements

Writing business plans is regarded as one of the critical platforms of entrepreneurship, and it has increasingly become pertinent in the core activities of higher education since the students are required to write business plans for their innovative products. In this study, a collaborative website namely BRAINY Business Plan Website (BBP) has been proposed. Prior to the website development, it is crucial for software engineers to investigate user requirements. This study is a mixed method in nature; 432 undergraduates (third-year and fourth-year students from 11 universities in Thailand), have responded to the questionnaires, whereby the researcher seeks to gain the in-depth findings from a focus group interview. The quantitative data were analysed in the SPSS program with descriptive statistical techniques. More than half of the participants reported that they had experience in studying or writing a business plan. In terms of various contents in websites, the users expected to browse and to use the websites for free at the highest level (Mean=4.375, S.D.=1.003), followed by clear instructions in writing a business plan, secure system when logging in, and a clear description of user access right. The findings from the interview also supported that all participants (11 undergraduates) had experience in a competitive business plan contest and were interested in using a business plan website. The results also pointed to the needs of free access of the websites, clustered security system, and short videos as multimedia. The highlight of this system is the addition of tools that help students to become creative in their search for innovation using TRIZ. The TRIZ tool provides a logical approach to develop creativity for innovation and problem solving.