Entrepreneurial design thinking and business success: Empirical evidence from Nigeria

South African universities have embraced a drive to internationalize in view of globalization. One of the widely adopted measures towards internationalization has been the recruitment of international postgraduate scholars. The rationale is to draw diverse knowledge and expertise from the international students. However, the University of KwaZulu Natal’s Westville campus has not managed to attract a significant number of international scholars. The trend suggests that the university is unable to meet the expectations of international postgraduate students with regards to service delivery. The suggestion is premised on the argument that the previous and current international postgraduate students have not been satisfied with the service quality to stimulate other foreign postgraduate student enrolments through positive word of mouth. The main objective of the study was to confirm the assertions while exposing the gaps between their expectations and perceptions of service delivery at the university. The SERVQUAL model was used to guide the assessment of service quality among the research participants. The study adopted quantitative methodologies and data was drawn from international postgraduate students who were enrolled at the institution during the academic year 2016. The findings revealed that the international postgraduate students were dissatisfied with the levels of service at the university. Specifically, the study exposed gaps across all the five dimensions of service quality, namely reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles. It was concluded that the management at the university should institute deliberate measures to improve service quality, especially towards international postgraduate students.

The Internet service sector is characterized as highly competitive, so Internet service providers have to seek ways to offer high-quality services to customers. This study measured the impact of perceived service quality on the repurchase intention of customers with the mediating impact of customers’ price perception. Data were gathered by surveying 405 customers of Internet service providers in Amman (Jordan) using the snowball sampling technique; the questionnaire was shared through social medias. Data were analyzed using factor analysis, regression, path analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicate that service quality factors represented by perceived service quality significantly affect customers’ repurchase intention and price perception (p-value is less than 0.05). Furthermore, price perception partially mediates the relationship between perceived service quality and customers’ repurchase intention, with an estimated power of 0.136. Thus far, the mediating variable that explains and predicts the relationship between perceived service quality and customers’ repurchase intention has been overlooked in the extant literature. Therefore, this study employs the role of price perception as a mediator variable. In addition, it provided an accurate assessment of customers’ perceptions of service quality of Internet providers in Amman (Jordan).

Innovative design labs were created by public authorities of the USA, Australia, Singapore, Finland, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, Denmark, China, and other countries to accelerate changes and develop modern public service. This paper provides further insight to establishing external innovation accelerators for strengthening capacity of public institutions. The study aims to define the development opportunities for innovative design labs for the public sector in Ukraine’s regions by the case of the Laboratory of Intellectual Development for Empowering Regions (LIDER). The study was conducted at two stages: (1) exploring the features of innovation implementation in the public sector and outlining the main problems of innovation capacity of public institutions; (2) defining the development opportunities for the LIDER via SWOT-analysis. To substantiate the study results, the correlation analysis between autocratic, bureaucratic, competitive, self-protective, and participative leadership behaviors of CEOs and innovation index based on data from 18 countries was performed, as well as a survey of 195 public servants of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine and an interview of 9 experts were conducted.
The following key development opportunities for the LIDER were detected: promoting the introduction of incremental innovations in public institutions by using design thinking methodology; assisting the development of pro-innovative culture and participative leadership via individual-centric and system-oriented approaches; developing effective tools for performance management and supporting public institutions in project activity; organizing the competitions for regional innovative projects; assisting in creation of radically human systems in public institutions.

Acknowledgment
The paper was prepared within the framework of the joint Ukrainian-Lithuanian R&D project “Competence Development of Lithuanian and Ukrainian Public Sector Employees Using Design-Thinking Methodology”.
The project has received funding from the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT, agreement № S-LU-20-5) and the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (agreement № М/31-2020).