eleventh year goals

Our management and team initiatives focused on the following:

• Resource Delivery, Awareness and Allocation

With hundreds of ventures moving through our program, and each one unique - we want to make sure we are providing an experience that is rich in quality for as many founders as possible. This year, we worked to improve the facilitation of IDEA-specific resources to ventures as well as programs outside of IDEA, and add new resources as times evolve. Our goal was to make sure that ventures are supported by us, and we are filling in the “gaps” of our offerings on a continual basis.

• Intentional and Inclusive Actions

A part of progressing is recognizing where we are lacking in our knowledge or in providing pathways to opportunities, and working to change. This has been a daily task and isn’t allocated to just one person or time of year. It’s institution-wide. No action just happens, and every small choice made, creates a butterfly effect when working with as many lives as we touch here at IDEA. Our goal is to curate a welcoming environment for the entire entrepreneurial community and stand strong in our resolve to rise all boats, and do our part to not allow barriers to keep entrepreneurship from coming from anywhere. As a part of this initiative, there was a clear focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, including highlighting diversity within our ventures, our management team, and faculty.

eleventh

• Authentic and Genuine Engagement

One of our goals for this year has been to encourage members of our community to engage with our program and make use of the humanizing approach we take to entrepreneurship in the work that we do. Understanding what it is that we do at IDEA, and providing steps to get easily involved.

• IDEA Culture of Resilience

Adversity breeds innovation - this has always been true. We wanted to enhance this mentality and prove that when you get knocked down, you can get back up again, stronger than ever before. We talk about the fear of failure, and the difficult barriers that come with entrepreneurship and finding success, but this year we wanted to enhance a community at IDEA of students and ventures who lean on each other to learn and help each other get through hard parts.

• Growth, Learning, and Empowerment from Within

We wanted to empower those within our community to help us change and improve it, and hold it up as something they’re proud to have been a part of and that brings them to their own next level - personally and professionally. As IDEA, we seek to practice what we preach, and allow stakeholders a chance to learn, grow, and reach beyond IDEA - and benefit from the efforts that they’ve put into this program.