What designpreneurship really means in Singapore

As designers, we are a special breed of people. We are dreamers confronting realities through the practice of commercial art. We live by our dream of trying to decode the thinking and creative process.

However, creative recognition may not guarantee sustained interest over time. Financial rewards do. Hence, the combination of design and entrepreneurship provides this attractive appeal of offering us both tangible and intangible benefits, through the creation of wealth and the building of a designer's reputation respectively.

Remember that the decision to be a master of your own career destiny is yours alone. You have a choice to make, either to work for yourself, or for others. It is you and no one else who is the author of whether your life story turns out to be one of success or failure.

To equip you with a champion's mindset, I will share with you the five most important actions required for you to become a successful designpreneur -

1. Keep Dreaming
Your dreams must be kept alive at all times. We must not stop dreaming of attaining our aspirations, along with its host of benefits. Subconsciously, it is these very dreams that will drive you forward, and direct all your thoughts and actions to helping you set your life's priorities, in order to prepare you for the eventual actualization of your dreams.

2. Keep Questioning
Never take things at face value. One has to keep pondering and questioning every experience that has taken place in our lives and business as well as that of others. We need to satisfy our curiosity about occurrences in our daily lives, various kinds of human behaviour and reactions, market happenings, our surrounding environment as well as general matters, including the world economy, politics, investment, etc. We need to stay constantly informed in order to make wise decisions. Satisfying our curiosity is one good way to be market savvy and street smart.

3. Keep Thinking
Our mind should never cease thinking. We should always engage our brain in different thinking modes at all times. An engaged mind is often a well-oiled mind. Through constant questioning and thinking, we will be able to gradually increase our mental capacity and bandwidth, leading to a higher level of wisdom eventually.

4. Keep Looking
Design and business ideas can literally be found everywhere. We just need to be curious and observant. Every good old idea can be imitated, improvised and innovated to become novel again. This process of regenerating old ideas into new and better ones, simply requires us to engage in proactive thinking.

5. Keep Trying
Perfection can never be achieved through a single attempt. Through the process of trying, you will increase your level of perseverance and resourcefulness. And you will likely uncover more ways of doing things; unravelling new wisdom and sharpening your skills along the way. Best of all, you might discover hidden talents that you never knew existed.

Always remember that knowledge without action is useless. Real change must come from within you. Your only limitation lies only in your mind. If you think you can, you will. If you think you cannot, nothing else will matter.