Integrating inner development goals and design thinking to build dynamic capabilities for sustainable innovation

The Vaqueros Innovation Platform (VIP) Idea Lab is an experiential entrepreneurship education program designed to cultivate design thinking (DT) competencies and inner development capacities among diverse stakeholders in an underserved border region. This program evaluation study draws on registration and postworkshop data from 918 registered participants across 20 workshops, with 619 signed-in participants and 187 matched pre–post skill observations. This study evaluates how a structured, community-embedded DT program develops competencies aligned with the inner development goals (IDGs) framework. Descriptive and frequency analyses of skill selection data show that participants consistently prioritized communication, creativity/innovation, problem solving, and critical thinking. Postworkshop reports indicate gains across all 10 competency areas, with critical thinking emerging as the most frequently reported skill developed. The VIP Idea Lab model offers a replicable, community-responsive framework for integrating IDGs and DT into sustainability-focused entrepreneurship education, particularly relevant to micro-sized and small enterprise ecosystems in structurally underresourced regions.