e
MENTOR TURNING IDEAS INTO SOLUTIONS
e
MENTOR TURNING IDEAS INTO SOLUTIONS
DESIGN INNOVATION AND LEADERSHIP | SPRING 2015 | RAZ GODELNIK Roupen Karageuzian | Joonsoo Kang | Sara Aboulhosn | Hussein Ismail | Nancy Karam
Table of Contents
1. TOMORROW STARTS HERE 2. WHAT’S HOLDINGS US BACK 3. THE ROAD TO DISCOVERY • INTERVIEWS • USER PROFILES • JOURNEY MAPPING • COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE
4. WHAT WE ENVISION 5. LET’S COLLABORATE 6. THE E-MENTOR 7. TAKING THE LEAD
The World Needs More Solutions
“When you become an ent who are saving the world biggest forces of good on
We live in a world of constant turmoil with growing needs and complex problems of global scale on all fronts - humanitarian, economic, social, environmental, institutional and governmental - that require our attention, ideas, determination and collaboration. The world is in desperate need for solutions. There’s a lot of talk about making the world a better place but preaching alone will not do the job. We need to start taking action and join forces with those individuals who are already driving change and improving lives by solving one problem at a time. Progress will not come from one big breakthrough idea or a long awaited miracle, but rather from a global network of startup communities, creating and building solutions that will make the world a truly better place. This is the new generation of superheroes, of problem solvers and innovative thinkers, this is the age of entrepreneurs.
trepreneur, you join a group of people d. Entrepreneurs are one of the single n the planet.� Nick Scheidies
Why Startups? Businesses grow and prosper because of their ability to understand people’s needs and solve their problems, but old businesses are often slow to adapt to emerging problems and that’s where entrepreneurs come in.
Startups are designed from the ground up to solve today’s problems, creating new opportunities, and driving advancement and positive social, economic, and environmental change.
This smartphone app monitors changes to skin features, initially targeting changes in moles as an early warning system for skin cancer. This turns the smartphone into a data collection device, which gives doctors more information to aid diagnosis.
Bookshare is the world’s largest accessible online library of copyrighted books for people with print disabilities such as blindness. The organization has a network of technology, corporate and non-profit advisors, as well as a community of donors.
trustparency
This storytelling web platform helps charities create the right level of emotional attachment for long-term, trust-based relationships. Social projects can show their donors the social impact achieved with their contribution by a transparent approach to funding.
Entrepreneurs create jobs, encourage local commerce, provide free information and education, fund big ideas and provide affordable loans to small businesses, start charities and foundations, bring people together, solve major environmental issues, push science and medicine to new frontiers, and even help topple totalitarianism.
Hole-in-the-Wall ZubaBox is a solar-powered Internet hub that brings Wi-Fi to the African wilderness and provides long-term sustainable development to the world’s poorest countries. To date, it has provided more than 114,000 computers to Africa’s most isolated communities.
Hole-in-the-Wall is a free computer built into a wall to allow poor children in India to use one for the first time. Since its inception in 1999, Holein-the-Wall has grown from a single computer in New Delhi to more than 100 computers at various locations across India and abroad.
Imazon is the first independent deforestation monitoring system for the Brazilian Amazon, using technical mapping and satellite imagery. Its mission is to save the Amazon from the forest floor up, and has pioneered a “Green City,” a model of sustainability with a new economic approach that has seen illegal deforestation virtually halted.
Building an Army for Change So if the future is in the hands of entrepreneurs, who is cultivating this power? According to the report ‘Fostering a Startup and Innovation Ecosystem’ creating the right environment for entrepreneurship should be a global concern whereby countries need to develop the necessary ecosystems for businesses to thrive. Investing in human capital, creating density of talented thinkers and makers, highlighting entrepreneurs as role models and accepting failure as an integral part of the learning process, as well as providing financing opportunities and policies that support startups, can all dramatically increase the potential for successful ventures to emerge and flourish.
And if we zoom in to examine the dynamics that set the foundation for innovation on an institutional level, we find that education is at the core of such transformation. Companies increasingly rely on technology and problem-solving skills to tackle business challenges, moving away from the constraints of traditional employment. As such, traditional education, has to shift its emphasis to include learning opportunities that promote handson skills development where students learn by doing. Classes, workshops and events, that teach job-specific technical expertise and provide the experiential learning needed for creating startups, should be incorporated to support entrepreneurs, and notions such as collaboration and teamwork should become an integral part of the learning process. Last but not least, and in order to stress the importance of the role that educational institutions play in fostering an entrepreneurial mindset and paving the way for innovation, the report also states that university-based ventures are more than 100x more likely to turn into publicly traded companies than non-university startups.
Tomorrow starts here.
What’s Holding Us Back As candidates of a Master’s degree at Parsons the New School of Design, we are learning to become design thinkers and innovation leaders equipped with the necessary skill set to cope with the complex global economy and its rapidly evolving standards. We come from diverse cultural backgrounds, industry professions and cities and our main goal is to complement our academic and professional accomplishments with the latest design and business skills that are proving successful in the new economy. Parsons’ Graduate programs provide brilliant frameworks and in depth knowledge into the diverse perspectives of innovation. The Strategic Design and Management program for instance responds well to the major restructuring of developed and emerging economies worldwide, and brings design thinking sustainability into the foreground. The program aims to create leaders
that will leverage the new economy, take strategic design to the next level, and lead the future companies and initiatives that will shape a better world.
The discrepancy betw exposed when proje
Our programs are academically rigorous and industry focused and prepare us to be managers who launch and lead organizations driven by design processes. We are exposed to new contexts and practices both within and outside of design-based industries, and obtain cutting-edge analyses of the digital information-based economy, which gears us towards new business models and creative organizational designs for all industries. We graduate
with an understanding of the sophisticated real-world perspectives on business, operations, sustainability, management, leadership, entrepreneurship, design innovation, and design research. And in theory, we are equipped to make the kinds of changes we are being taught to make. Many of these graduate programs at Parsons are relatively new and there is much room to build emphasis in certain areas of interest. Entrepreneurship according to our survey seems to be rooted in many of the candidates. Some aim to build new social enterprises while others want to disrupt long standing industries. And across the board, they all share the same pain points. The discrepancy between theory and practice is suddenly exposed when projects are taken out of the classroom. Projects with immense potential see their demise at the end of semesters. Discussion and ideas are quickly walked away from, and in the few cases where ideas are actually pursued, the journey map reflects one pain point after the other.
ween theory and practice is suddenly ects are taken out of the classroom.
Much like a bird and its nest, a graduate student is expected to connect the dots and build and leverage a network that helps bring ideas to life. The effort, dedication and motivation factors are indispensable in an entrepreneurial endeavor. And it is not up to a school or anyone to pave the way for one’s own success. However, there are initiatives, resources and platforms that could promote and endorse one’s journey, elevate many unnecessary roadblocks, and fuel the entrepreneurial ambitions. The New School has set the stage for many of these initiatives and resources. Many of them have proven to be very helpful. Others were either not well communicated, well targeted, too narrow in scope, too broad in scope, or simply not practical. The result of the baseline after much research reveals that today, current and graduating students at Parsons do not feel they have the required mentorship, guidance and resources to bring their ideas to life. Even with the utmost effort to connect all the dots, students find that there are broken links and many opportunities to rethink the elementary design of these initiatives. Like the elevators in many of the buildings of the New School, there has been significant investments and efforts to elevate the student body – however, not to its best potential.
Today, current and graduating students at Parsons do not feel they have the required mentorship, guidance and resources to bring their ideas to life.
The number of startups is one major indicator and metric of the school’s success in molding successful innovators and leaders. Most other schools pride themselves with dedicated sections on their website, proudly flaunting company logos and success metrics of their own graduates. A rich and varied portfolio has always proven to be one of the most effective tools to build credibility for prospective applicants to the school, collaborators and all stakeholders. Therefore, it should be a school’s priority to provide and communicate the venues and resources available, and constantly thrive to expand the different initiatives that prepare entrepreneurs for the real world.
What are the resources currently available? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Where do the opportunities and threats lie? What does the ecosystem of graduate schools in New York look like? What is our offered solution? How is it scalable? How does it help our world become a better place?
The Road to Discovery
“We feel ready to embark going through our program even know where to begin
Our hypotheses were developed based on our own experiences and that of our fellow peers both in Design & Technology and SDM within the graduate programs of Parsons. Taking a step back, as we embarked on this journey, we were hoping to create something that would have lasting positive value. We used a rigorous evaluation process to identify and filter through a multitude of ideas. Although many of the proposals were promising, none of them really resonated with us. In order to determine the way forward for the semester and tackle a problem that we could better relate to, we looked at the process from a new angle. We tried to understand the underlying reasons as to why some ideas that have great potential to positively impact our world are not followed through, and we wore the shoes of social entrepreneurs. It quickly became clear that our shoes were shiny on the outside, glamorous even – but they were only meant for display. This is true not just for those of us who want to make a social impact, but also those who want to embark on any kind of entrepreneurial journey during or post graduate studies. The fact of the matter is, and one of our interviewees said it best, “we feel ready to embark on the entrepreneurial path while going through our programs, but then reality strikes - we don’t even know where to begin.” - Nathalie Neumann, SDM Graduate, 2015
on the entrepreneurial path while ms, but then reality strikes - we don’t n” - Nathalie Neumann, SDM Graduate, 2015
Interviews It came as no surprise the overwhelming validation we received, one interview after the other. In fact, more than 20 in depth interviews were conducted with 1st year, 2nd year, SDM and DT students as well as professors and staff. A significant amount of time was spent into this exploratory qualitative phase of this assignment, aiming to identify discrepancies between what is offered, what is communicated and what is missing. The pain points were more or less the same and revolved around the roadblocks that students come across be it in the decision to start a venture, or in the actual process of going from idea to startup. BR
AN
D
BR
A
N
D
We tried to understand the underlying reasons as to why some ideas that have great potential to positively impact our world are not followed through.
Who did we interview? 1st Year SDM & DT
Professors
2nd Year SDM & DT
Professionals
Pain point #1 The first pain point revolves around mentorship and risk. Each person has a propensity for risk, and no matter what the level of tolerance, not having a mentoring body or go to place beyond the professors does not help alleviate the burden. In fact, many of our interviewees felt that with the proper guidance in the early stages, they would have been encouraged to follow through their ideas, knowing that an expert or a credible source has looked at their proposals with a critical eye and has provided recommendations on the way forward. Resources and mechanisms are numerous but alas not part of our school’s current model.
Pain point #2
The second pain point was mainly around the ‘gap’. Not everyone from a business background, and most of our interviewees, even that do come from the corporate world felt that there was one o areas within the Business Model side of things that were detrime the process. The most recurring area of weakness was finance. “T supposed to be a startup, and we are still too early in the proces hiring people with expertise in different fields. We need to be ab create a sound financial model for our idea. Without those numb going to take us seriously?”. Although some programs do provide Modeling course, and the Business Model Canvas is tackled, thing one interviewee mentioned “quite high level” and “not really acti the real world”. Often times, ideas are put to rest simply because do not feel they have accessible resources to tap into to find the they need. A designer should be able to go beyond his practice an business language that will determine the viability of his practice of resources that bridge this gap, especially in programs like SDM program is partly a management program, is therefore critical in ability and motivation to strive. “Micro- and Macro- Econ courses beginning of the semester do not bridge this gap” confirmed one It is beyond that - it is about having a go-to person or place that recommendations for a student’s particular situation.
Pain point #3 The third pain point was indeed painful across the board. Every single person we interviewed faced or anticipated to face problems in the Legal area. This branches out into a multitude of issues that can be bucketed in two categories: 1. Immigration issues for International Students 2. Registration, trademarks, intellectual property
“What type of company do we start? How do we register? How long does it take? How do we sustain ourselves financially throughout these processes without knowing how long they might be and what they entail?”. These are only a few of the questions that were brought up during the interviews. The list went on, and the truth of the matter is, the current model does not make things any easier for students. The ISSS is certainly driving efforts in e comes addressing issues for International Students. But it has n those its limitations in scope of what they can do, and their or several focus is not geared towards international entrepreneurs. ental to “Even within their basic functions, it is not a place to This is go to get answers” said one interviewee. “The school ss to start is predominantly filled with international students and ble to at least professors, that is where all the money comes from bers, who is how is this reflected in the resources that are offered e a Business to us as international students?” Beyond ISSS, some gs are as programs (e.g. the SDM) introduced a Regulatory and ionable in Ethical Contexts course where students explore the e student legal and ethical dimensions of current innovative designanswers intensive companies, and understand the Anglo-American nd speak the legal and regulatory regime at a high level. This course, e. The lack although valuable firstly because of the contact with M where the potentially lawyer professors and secondly because of its n a student’s content, “does not really add much practical value to us” s at the said graduating second year SDM students. e interviewee. provides
Pain point #4 The fourth pain point was around funding. The entire sub-process reveals pain points and at different stages; writing a pitch deck, the actual practice of pitching, to finding funding entities like Venture Capital firms and other institutions, etc‌ for the few who have the courage to get to this stage, this is where the story ends. A second year student mentioned that they were never put in a situation whereby they could pitch their ideas to ‘sharks’ - not a real life or even a simulated situation. Other students mentioned that it was always a student and sometimes Professor initiative to find events to see the practice in action. Without funding, most ideas never get to know anything other than the font in which they have been written. Writing a solid pitch, building the skills to present to potential investors or partners, having access to Venture Capital firms, Alumni, professionals, companies, deals with banks tailored for Parsons students - all were aspirations of our peers. For those who are going through it, they feel they are completely alone, and for those who plan to go through it, they fear this phase the most as they feel they would have absolutely no support from their alma mater. This is not necessarily a curriculum based issue, but rather a lack of entrepreneurial directive overall.
Pain point #5 The fifth pain point is around prototyping. It is beyond the 3D printing machines that only a few know of. It is about having the resources, space, and guidance to prototype, a collaborative space for all student and faculty to develop physical products, devices or even concepts as part of their startups and get help to build better and faster. We are designers, and are lucky to have amongst us all the talent in the world. The pain point lies in the lack of collaboration between programs, professors and departments. A Design and Technology graduate student would highly benefit from the Strategy and Design thinking skills of an SDM graduate student. Likewise, SDM students would find many answers and skills throughout the prototyping phases of their ideas if they just looked across the hall. These were the kinds of suggestions our interviewees made, the kinds of collaborations they would greatly benefit from to partially address the lack of resources for prototyping. And once again, it seemed like the students had to connect all the dots themselves, and that the culture for collaboration was not an overarching one.
Initiatives are there. Sometimes poorly communicated, sometimes not comprehensive, maybe even inefficient. Other initiatives are in the pipeline, some with great promise, some with anticipated flaws. Ultimately, the aim is not to reinvent the wheel. It is important to capitalize on what has been working and what promises to work well for the entrepreneurs of our graduate programs. But it is of utmost importance to look into all the pain points and realize that a holistic and centralized solution does not yet exist, and with the bits and pieces that do exist, the user is definitely not the hero of their design. Our interviewees recognize that Design school was a choice. For those in the SDM program, most came in hoping for less of a trade-off with what they could get from an MBA or a management program. And overall, design school should not imply no resources for entrepreneurs. Granted, it is fundamentally a student’s job to connect the dots.
It is of utmost importance t realize that a holistic and c and with the bits and piece not the hero of their design
But an entrepreneurial infrastructure and culture through a robust student centered model would definitely help address these pain points, help students better connect those dots and eventually create the momentum for change. A change that will only reflect on the School’s potential to be the leader in change.
to look into all the pain points and centralized solution does not yet exist, es that do exist, the user is definitely n.
Survey Q.
ARE YOU CONSIDERING STARTING YOUR OWN BUSINESS?
45% Q.
55%
I think about it but I’m not sure I’ve got what it takes
DO YOU FEEL YOU ARE PREPARED ENOUGH TO BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR? DO YOU HAVE THE NECESSARY TOOLS AND RESOURCES TO EXECUTE YOUR IDEA?
30% Q.
Yes definitely, but I don’t know where to start
Yes absolutely
10%
65%
Not yet but I’m working on it
Honestly, I don’t know where to start
ARE YOU AN INTERNATIONAL STUDENT, AND IF SO ARE YOU PLANING TO LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITIES IN NEW YORK OR GO BACK HOME? WHY?
40% I’m an 30% No, American citizen I’m an international student and I plan to go back 20% home because it’s easier for me to make it there I’m an international student and I’m already 10% Yes, developing my business here
I’m an international student and I want to try and make it in New York but paperwork is an issue
Q.
WHICH TOOLS AND RESOURCE DO YOU NEED IN ORDER TO HELP YOU MOVE FORWARD?
34% MENTORSHIP 34% LEGAL ADVICE 10% FUNDING 22% KNOW-HOW Q. A.
WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS LACKING IN YOUR PROGRAM THAT COULD HELP YOU MOVE FORWARD? “Business knowledge - how to create profit projections for pitching investors” “Business mentorship” “Elective classes that would help me “Incubator” become better equipped to move forward with my business” “Centralized information on “Real startup practice!”
available resources”
Q. A.
HOW ARE YOU ADDRESSING LEGAL ISSUES WITH REGARDS TO YOUR INNOVATION?
Q. A.
HOW ARE YOU ADDRESSING FINANCIAL ISSUES WITH REGARDS TO YOUR INNOVATION?
“Seek counsel” “Google”
“Saving up”
“Online research, but it would be good to understand patents better”
“Trying to put a budget together and then I will seek private investors”
“Maintaining very low overhead and “Personal financing out of pocket for now” savings so far”
Q.
HOW DO YOU FEEL IN TERMS OF RISK?
part of the 18% It slows me down 82% It’s process I’m well prepared and ready for 0% whatever is required
User Profiles Charles
Christina
GRAPHIC DESIGNER MFA in Design & Technology First Year
BRAND DESIGNER MS in Strategic Design & Mana Second Year
“I don’t understand how to navigate numbers and legal stuff” “I usually get information from informal networks at school. I would like to build my professional connections to open new doors to new opportunities” “What is the starting point?” “How can I start a team?”
“So I have a great idea an Now what?” “Who can I talk to about step further?” “I wish I could learn more through this program” “How do I create a perfec “How can I find a financia
PAIN POINTS
PAIN POINTS
23 / American
• Prototype | 5 • Legal | 2 • Guidance | 3 • Financial | 1 • Network | 1
32 / American
• Prototype | 2 • Legal | 3 • Guidance | 1 • Financial | 4 • Network | 5
The key points and insights taken from the interviews were translated to create diverse personas, representing those who are and those who are not interested in pursuing entrepreneurship.
Jaskir 28 / Indian
agement
nd prototype... moving my project one
e practical business skills
ct startup pitch deck?” al advisor I can trust?
ENGINEER MFA in Transdisciplinary Design First Year
“I attended the Interpreneur series, but I honestly don’t feel I got any new direction or insight” “I can’t get a concrete answer from anyone at ISSS!” “So what if I have a great idea, I will never be able to execute it because of immigration issues” “Who can i contact for legal advice?”
PAIN POINTS • Prototype | 5 • Legal | 1 • Guidance | 3 • Financial | 2 • Network | 3
Stakeholders Map
Wid Netw
Dire Stakeh
PROFESSIONAL NETWORK
PROFESSORS
PARTNERS
Co Stakeh
GRADUATE INTERNA & LO
FACULTY
der work
ect holders
OTHER INSTITUTIONS
ore holder
E STUDENTS ATIONAL OCAL
Y & STAFF
ALUMNI
THE NEW SCHOOL
Journey Mapping The following journeys were mapped, allowing the identification of key touch-points and moments in the process, and determining whether they were positive or negative attributes. In synthesizing the research, our team was able to affiliate a motivation with each identified moment in the journey map. Each motivation provided an explanation of students’ actions at that specific point in the experience. By pinpointing these motivations, generative questions emerged like “so, what does this mean?� and helped develop the process to further generate key insights for the following phases of the project.
From Idea to Drawer IDEA I have an idea!
RESEARCH Through pain-storming, and customer research, interviews, we are valid our assumptions. PROJECT As part of my coursework, I now have the chance to turn my idea into a real project within an academic framework.
LEARNING Through my courses and personal research I’m learning and gathering valuable information and insights that are helping me develop and validate my idea further.
TAR We our our dow are
PROTOTYP We have s our solutio various sta
INSIGHT & JOB-TO-BE-DONE With team effort and guidance fro professors we are applying the m we learned to frame our insights a the job-to-be-done.
, market , and dating
SOLUTION We have tested our MVP and believe we’ve nailed the solution. BUSINESS MODEL Now it’s time to work on the business model. We’re not really sure about lots of aspects like revenue streams and cost structure so we’ll settle for rough estimates.
RGET CUSTOMER e now have clearly framed r target customer, developed r user profiles, and nailed wn the biggest problem they e facing.
VISION We have synthesized a clear vision statement.
PING & TESTING started prototyping on and testing it at ages.
om our methodologies and discover
DRAWER We have a great deck but after the presentation the project goes into the drawer and we move on to the next...
MAP We are excited about moving on to developing our Minimum Awesome Product.
User Journeys
IDEA + CONCEPT
RESEARCH
ADVISOR
PROTOTYPING & TESTING
BUSINESS MODE
EL
LEGAL ADVICE
IMMIGRATION ISSUES
FUNDING
NETWORKING
The ISSS Experience
Automatic confirmation email (April 17) >> Update news from the Experience Dept. (April 17)
Filled out the Experience Learni Agreement form
Internship offer
Search for contact person Find answer from other students
‘Letter of Eli from the Exp Department
Contact ISSS : IGNORED
Send an Email to ISSS (April 7) >> Reminder Email Sent (April 9) >> No Reply (Until April 20)
Without further instructi i.e. course registration, CPT p
APRIL 6 Our team has also conducted one-on-one interviews with three international students who recently got an internship offer in New York. The collected data from the students triggered rich and insightful user journeys that illustrated the patterns observed from the current CPT application process and the feelings and thoughts that emerged while contacting both ISS and Experience Department. This qualitative method was the backbone of the ideation and prototyping steps that followed. The curvy lines of the journey map fluctuate between negative experiences, which were represented by points situated below the line, and positive experiences, which
We recommend you to wait until ISS sends you a confirmation letter with instruction. At this moment, unfortunately, there is nothing I can help you. Done with the whole CPT process, receiving a new I20- from ISS
ing
igibility’ perience t
ion process
Find answer from other students
Email for further clarification : IGNORED
A Walk-in with ISS advisor : NO CLEAR ANSWER
Done with course registration
Received an email from ISS regarding further instruction
Received a reply from ISS regarding the course registration process
MAY 4 were represented by points situated above the line. The journey’s aim is to display several layers of information like the duration of waiting, the amount of frustration along the process and the quality of the counseling experience altogether.
Key Takeaways The overall feedback regarding the CPT process was highly negative and all participants emphasized that they did not receive the necessary information from advisors but from classmates who have gone through the same process earlier. The map illustrates the main issues that arose during the CPT process.
What is Parsons Offering Us? After validating the identified pain points with in depth one-on-one interviews and surveys, and understanding and mapping the journeys of the selected personas, our insights were further solidified and the job-tobe-done was ever more so clear. In order to further validate our hypotheses, we conducted research to find out what available resources does The New School provide its students.
The eLab
Helping alumni students transition to entrepreneurs It was insightful to find that the School of Design strategies has an initiative called the eLab which helps alumni students transition to entrepreneurs through matching the students with New York incubators and accelerators. So far the program has attracted several alumni groups of students, 4 of which are incubated at the Center for Social Innovation with mentorship from two Design Strategies professors from Parsons. The initiative is not yet well communicated; most students mentioned throughout the research phase that they have not heard of it. The accepted alumni groups need to be at a relatively advanced stage, having demonstrating at least some exchange to prove the viability of their ventures. Financials need to be set as well as the business model developed. The mentors aid with creating contacts between the alumni and seed capital, incubators and accelerators. They also facilitate midway and final presentations to the mentors as well as the Dean and associate dean of the School of Design Strategies to monitor the group’s’ progress. The eLab is still in its early stages.
It has very promising future plans and aims to become more comprehensive in terms of what it provides to the students. A buy-in and endorsement from the different stakeholders of The New School and a well planned communication plan could lead to the launch of more and more ventures, ones that will reflect on the school’s success and commitment to produce change makers.
Foster creativity within the international community Another initiative by the Center for Student Success is the Interpreneurship Program. It is a pilot program designed for international students who want to become entrepreneurs and want to better understand how they can start their own companies in the U.S.
This program aims to provide valuable tools for entrepreneurial students who have their big idea but do not know how to go through the execution phases due to U.S. immigration rules. The vision for the program is to create an internal Interpreneurial Incubator at The New School. As part of the research phases and to better understand the current initiatives, members from our project team attended a few of the hosted spring events and to their dismay, they were not able to gather any executable advice. One of the events focused on the Legal issues with regards to opening a business as an International student. When one student asked where can all the presented information be found, the reply was that it was everywhere. Information is not collated on one database, therefore making it a tedious and sometimes very arduous task to find relevant information. This is particularly true when visiting the ISSS office which despite all its efforts is still not a go-to place for many students. As shown on one of our journey maps, it is ill organized and inefficient, creating frustration for the International student that is looking for concrete answers.
The Social Innovation Initiative at The New School is another initiative focused on a collaboration between New School students, faculty, and administrators to create a program incubator for diverse activities that will accelerate, broaden and deepen social entrepreneurship and social innovation education at the university. The New Challenge, a project of the Social Innovation Initiative, is a competition to grant funding, mentorship, and learning opportunities for students from across the university with ideas who want to make a difference in the world. Winners will receive awards up to $10,000 to develop their ideas and to take them to the next level of implementation.
Social Impact, Entrepreneurship & Design is a course that a second year student introduced us to through an in-depth interview. The course provides students with the opportunity to develop and expand their ideas to address social and environmental challenges and create actionable plans to move them forward. With this course, as mentioned by our interviewee who is a teacher’s assistant to the course, students are able to move past the prototyping stage where they learn more about the Legal, Financials, and Intellectual Property aspects and are therefore better prepared to apply to fellowships and competitions to attain funding and move forward in their projects. Something that, as seen with our interviews and surveys, is missing as an integral part of our practice. Other resources available to The New School students include a list of competitions found on the Social Innovation Initiative. Beyond the programs listed above, there are no resources readily available for entrepreneurial students. There seems to be future plans that aim to bridge the gap for many students’ business acumen by facilitating microeconomics and macroeconomics weekly boot camps. Importantly, the creation of the Venture Lab, a solution targeted for entrepreneurial students and aiming to address many of the highlighted pain points, is a future plan, currently in the discussion phases, for the school to instigate a mentorship initiative that also includes networking, collaboration, and legal guidance. Granted there are a great many “future” initiatives for the students that will address many of the pain points. That is in itself validation that pain points do exists, and the need to address them is critical. nevertheless we can not help but wonder what is really in the pipeline and what is the roadmap for implementation for these initiatives?
What is really in the pipeline and what is the roadmap for implementation for these initiatives?
Parsons Initiatives
CURRENT INITIATIVES
eLAB
CURRENT INITIATIVES Social Innovation Initiative eLAB Interpreneurship Program Social Innovation Initiative Social Impact, Entrepreneurship Interpreneurship Program and Design Course Social Impact, Entrepreneurship and Design Course
FUTURE INITIATIVES
FUTURE INITIATIVES
Comprehensive eLAB Comprehensive eLAB The Venture Lab the Venture Lab Microeconomics Microeconomics and and Macroeconomics weekly Macroeconomics boot camps weekly boot camps
The Competitive Landscape
This lead us to further our research and assess the ‘competitive landscape’ or graduate program ecosystem and the initiatives offered to students in New York. We researched other prominent universities and programs to get a clearer picture to what is missing for us as students at Parsons. NYU, for example, has the Entrepreneurial Institute which is a university-wide initiative to accelerate the pace of technology commercialization and the launch of successful startups. It is formed of NYU’s 60,000 students, faculty and researchers. The Institute’s team of startup experts and thought leaders offers educational programming, events, resources, and funding through many different programs. The Mark and Debra Leslie Entrepreneurs Lab is a 5,900-square-foot facility where NYU entrepreneurs from across all of NYU’s schools and colleges can meet to connect, collaborate, and tap into a vast array of resources to help develop their ideas and inventions into startup companies.
NYU
The Leslie eLab The Leslie eLab features co-working spaces, meeting rooms, an event space, and a fabrication lab to encourage interactions, prototyping, and collaborations that are essential in the development of entrepreneurial ideas. The NYU Leslie eLab has a prototyping space for all student and faculty developing physical products and devices as part of their startups. It is open and staffed thirty hours a week by experts available to help students and faculty build better and faster. The equipment includes 2wo Makerbot Fifth Generation Replicators 3D printers, one Makerbot Digitizer 3D scanner, one Forty Watt CO2 Laser Cutter with a 40� cut-bed, assorted sensors: accelerometers, barometers, light, ph level and soldering irons, drills, pliers, etc. The equipment and supplies in the Leslie eLab are free for all students, faculty, and researchers at NYU.
Made by NYU
Made by NYU is a site within the Entrepreneurial Institute that sho It is very impressive to scroll down through the companies and see name a few, prominent startups. This exemplifies a sense of NYU’s for mentorship and guidance. The NYU Entrepreneurs Blog keeps a recent events, updates on NYU incubated startups and perspective initiatives, there are workshops, seminars, and classes that focus o and that are looking to become entrepreneurs.
owcases companies founded by NYU students, faculty and alumni. Pinterest, Twitter, Etsy, Seamless, TaskRabbit, Audible, just to pride, especially for the up and coming entrepreneur who is looking a report on all things entrepreneurial at NYU including recaps on es on leading with an entrepreneurial spirit. In addition to all these on bridging the gaps for students coming from different backgrounds
Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Stern NYU The Help Desk, at the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Stern, is an educational resource that is staffed by seasoned professionals and subject matter experts who are ready to answer any questions related to the student’s venture. Their areas of assistance include accounting, brand & media relations, legal, and sales and marketing. The Help Desk is available once or twice a month and by appointment. The Innovation Lab is a 12 week seminar series and program designed to train students on how to create commercially viable innovations. Students, alumni and faculty collaborate to work on new products, services and business models generated among the group. The Lab trains participants to refine their innovations, build portfolios of patents and other intangible assets to protect their innovations, and license and sell those assets to the market.
“In a business world of way to win the game: T develop serial innovato organizations that cha inspire a sense of what
The Venture Mentor Network is a program that matches NYU entrepreneurs with mentors. The mentors are alumni and networks of seasoned entrepreneurs, investors and professionals ready to aid early-stage teams through the challenges of moving forward. Mentoring programs are custom built and catered to the entrepreneurs and their needs. The NYU Innovation Venture Fund is a seed-stage venture capital fund created to invest in NYU startups. Established in June 2010, this initiative is part of the University’s on-going commitment to entrepreneurship. The fund is open to proposals from students, faculty and researchers at various schools. NYU initially capitalized the Fund with more than $3 million and anticipates this growing to $20 million, with taxdeductible donor contributions. The Fund will make approximately five investments per year, from $100,000 - $500,000, in partnership with angel investors and/or venture capital firms. The Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) program is a university wide program sponsored by the Berkley Center with support from the NYU Innovation Venture Fund. The EIR Program supports the growing rate of early-stage technology commercialization and entrepreneurship across the University. EIRs are founders of or former senior executives from successful entrepreneurial ventures that work closely with NYU students, researchers, faculty and
f non-stop change, there’s only one Transform it entirely. Our mission: To ors capable of launching and leading allenge assumed boundaries and t’s possible.” Berkley Center
alumni who are founders of very early-stage ventures. They provide consulting, coaching and mentoring designed to help these founders take their venture concepts to the next level. They aid in business models and strategy, technology commercialization and product development plans, go-to-market plans and strategies, evaluating funding needs and identifying financing options, forming strategic partnerships and talent acquisition and compensation strategies. The $200K Entrepreneurs Challenge is yet another initiative that includes 3 competitions that give students the opportunity to receive startup cash, training assistance and individualized coaching from experienced entrepreneurs, investors and executives. There are a few more initiatives under the NYU umbrella but these are the most prominent ones. It is therefore quite clear that although not completely holistic, there is a solid ecosystem and infrastructure for entrepreneurship, as well as diversified outlets that aid students and faculty members in finding answers to critical questions.
Harvard Harvard was another institution that we researched. The most prominent initiative there is the i-lab which was launched in 2011 as a resource for students interested in entrepreneurship and innovation. The programs offered by the i-lab are designed to aid students grow their ventures at any stage of development and cover a wide range of disciplines. The i-lab is even open for community members to attend many of the events and utilize the community lobby open workspace and WiFi. Additionally, a number of community partners, including the Small Business Administration, The Service Corps of Retired Executives, The Center for Women and Enterprise, and the Massachusetts Small Business Development Center host events, meetings, and office hours at the i-lab.
“50% of our alumni describe themselves as entrepreneurs within 10-15 years after graduation. With 90,000 living HBS alumni, that’s a lot of entrepreneurs.� HBS
Fostering Innovation and Entrepreneurship Across Harvard The i-lab’s approach differs than that of other entrepreneurship centers in its breadth, operating model, and governance. Firstly, it accepts any student from any Harvard school with any idea, fostering cross-disciplinary, cross-university collaboration. Secondly, it is student centered and faculty enabled, with programming supplied by schools across Harvard to help students take their ideas as far as possible. Third, the i-lab serves as a new model for university collaboration as it is co-governed by each of the Deans of Harvard and the Provost.
The pedagogy that the i-lab follows is based on a fourpart approach. The first part of the approach is based on Foundational Learning which is the educational entry point for exploring entrepreneurship and innovation and consists of courses, skill-based workshops, seminar videos, presentation materials, and guides. The second part of the approach is Expert Resources for students who have identified their venture and it includes 75 evening workshops and seminars hosted by the i-lab, one-on-one office hours with over 25 Experts-in-Residence, and 4 partner law firms in addition to support from Community Partner organizations. The third part of the approach is Experiential Learning Experience for students and
teams wanting to test and refine their ideas and ventures by placing them in “learning by doing� environments like Challenge competitions, week-long trips to vibrant startup ecosystems including Silicon Valley, New York City, and Boston, Weekend hackathons, Scrambles, and Coding Bootcamps, and a Startup Career fair. The fourth and final part of the approach is the Venture Incubation System for student-led teams whose ventures have progressed to a more advanced stage. The i-lab offers the Venture Incubation Program (VIP) during the Spring, Summer, and Fall of each calendar year which provides additional resources, including dedicated workspace, guided mentoring, private workshops, and a number of community building events. It exemplifies a community where the diverse skills and backgrounds of the students, mentors, and staff are leveraged. All in all, The i-lab operates as a startup within the larger university environment.
In addition to their In addition to their famous HBS case method, an interesting course that prepares students for their roles as entrepreneur is the FIELD course (Field Immersion Experiences in Leadership Development) at Harvard Business School (HBS) designed for first-year MBA students. It is a year-long, three-part course divided into FIELD 1 which focuses on leadership styles, FIELD 2 focuses on global intelligence and FIELD 3 Integrative Intelligence where students are evaluated on the “micro-business� they jointly conceive, form, and fund (each venture receives $3,000 from HBS in seed money), then launch and commercialize. Students are graded on market results rather than presentation and theory.
Empowering Student and Alumni Entrepreneurs The Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship empowers student and alumni entrepreneurs to create ventures that revolutionize.
”The future of this nation lies with new ventures,” Rock said. “They supply the new ideas, the new technologies, the new jobs. HBS has long been at the forefront of understanding the many facets of the entrepreneurial process, from the intricacies of finance to the art of leadership, and I am delighted to be able to support those efforts both now and for the future.” It has earned a reputation as the top program for entrepreneurial studies. Their initiatives — from the New Venture Competition to the Rock Accelerator to the Rock 100 — have become known as powerful tools for would-be entrepreneurs to experience the practical reality of starting up. The New Venture Competition supports students and alumni launching new business and social impact ventures. The Rock Accelerator is an innovative and competitive year long program providing 15 founding teams with up to $7,500 each in seed capital, matched mentors, and facilitated peer exchange. The Rock 100 is a worldwide exclusive HBS network for founders of early stage, high impact ventures. One must apply and be accepted to join this network of alumni entrepreneurs.
Columbia Entrepreneurship at Columbia, termed Columbia Entrepreneurship was founded in the summer of 2013. Their mission is “to support, invigorate, accelerate and motivate the Columbia community’s programs and culture around innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.� Their mandate is to find ways to take advantage of the enormous power, vitality and resources of the entire university. Their method is to encourage the partnerships between schools and institutes, students and alumni, the NYC community and government officials. The Columbia Startup Lab is a joint venture between five important Columbia schools and Columbia Entrepreneurship. It is a 5,100 sq.ft. co-working facility located at WeWork Soho West that provides subsidized space for 71 Columbia alumni entrepreneurs to house and nurture their fledgling ventures. Likewise, the annual #StartupColumbia Festival is a partnership among Columbia Entrepreneurship, two student entrepreneurship clubs, Barnard, and the schools of Business and Engineering to bring together the
entire community to discuss the most important topics in creative venture building. The Columbia Entrepreneurship Coaches Network is a program for students who have developed ideas and are ready to start with their venture; the students are paired up with a coach for some helpful discussions and high-level coaching.
“Our mission is to support, invigorate, accelerate and motivate the Columbia community’s programs and culture around innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.� Columbia Entrepreneurship
Stanford Influenced by the spirit of Silicon Valley, the Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship professional certificate program is designed to foster the student’s ability to think differently in their quest to develop innovative products, services and organizations. It is a partnership between the Stanford School of Engineering and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The Stanford Graduate School of Business Entrepreneurship Club is one of the oldest student-run entrepreneur’s clubs in the nation. The goal of the current GSB Entrepreneurship Club is to stimulate interest in entrepreneurialism among students and other members of the Stanford community. The club aims to provide their members with a lifelong learning & support platform to minimize risk and maximize success in ventures, and to promote the entrepreneurial mind-set both as a founder or manager of a startup as well as in the roles of an investor, advisor, or corporate partner. The vision of the e-club is to be the focal point for all startups at Stanford.
Pratt Pratt Design Incubator for Sustainable Innovation was created with the purpose of providing a place for Pratt’s entrepreneurial alumni to transform their ideas into viable businesses. It is now open to the public where the incubator provides space and ongoing strategic mentorship. The incubator supports its startups with custom-tailored services for doing business in a sustainable way. The startups have access to a training curriculum in Sustainable Entrepreneurship and to mentorship-based coaching. The incubator provides access to Markets, Networks, Office Infrastructure, Training, Talent and Capital to their entrepreneurs.
Schools in The Form of Incubators We also researched schools in the form of incubators like The DOSchool, 30 Weeks, Dorm Room Fund NYC amongst others. The DOSchool, with main campus in Hamburg Germany and a pop-up campus in New York City offers a one year program that is designed to train, mentor, and empower emerging social entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to work together on campus and then kickstart their own ventures in their home country. Utilizing the DOSchool method of DREAM (idea generation and out-of the box thinking), FOCUS (iterative feedback process, observation and prototyping, stakeholder mapping and role plays) PLAN ( transition between idea and implementation, project planning, strategic planning, budgeting, and tools for team management) and DO (supporting the implementation of a venture). The program takes place in two phases, a ten-week Incubation Phase on campus and a ten-month Implementation Phase in the Fellows’ home countries working on their venture startups.
“Very few companies are actually foun change that is 30 Weeks, a new progra York design schools — in collaboration Island and Google.” Fast Company, Named 30 Weeks one of t
30 Weeks 30 Weeks is a similar program but focused on designers. It is “an experimental program to give talented designers the handson experience, mentorship, critiques, tools, workspace, and connection to the communities they need to create products and start companies that may just change the world.”
The aim of 30 weeks is to act as a technology start-up eliminating wasted effort and maximizing speed to help transform designers into founders. They follow a learn-by-launching structure which gives participants a chance to build their entrepreneurship skills in an environment that’s as close to the real thing as possible. They offer start-up mentorship, discussions with industry leaders, real tools, group critiques, hands-on-help, a space to work and time to focus on your own product. The school collaborates with The New School Parsons, SVA, Google Hyper Island, Pratt and the CooperUnion.
nded and led by designers. Here to am by a powerhouse team of New with the education company Hyper
the World’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies of 2015 in Design
Others Dorm Room Fund NYC is a student-run venture firm that invests in student-run companies in the Greater New York area. The team is made up of students and aims to help peers build amazing companies. They do this by providing initial seed financing (generally $20,000), business and legal resources, and connections to experienced mentors and the broader DRF student community. Above that, as a team, they are all passionate about helping their peers start amazing companies, and are there to help fellow students in any way they can (even if they are not investors). Other interesting initiatives we found were Startup weekends which provide hands-on experiences where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if startup ideas are viable. Google for entrepreneurs provides aspiring entrepreneurs financial support and the best of Google’s resources to startup communities that equip and nurture them. It partners with startups and builds campuses where entrepreneurs can learn, connect, and create companies that will change the world. The Unreasonable Institute gets entrepreneurs what they need to scale solutions to the world’s biggest problems by identifying entrepreneurs with the potential to address issues such as poverty, lack of education, and social injustice at scale, and then by swarming them with mentors, funders, and partners to help grow their impact. “Our goal is to help each of these ventures scale up to meaningfully impact the lives of at least one million people each.”
Existing Platforms and Solutions In addition to programs offered by schools and institutions that are targeting graduate students, our team also investigated existing platforms that provide support for entrepreneurs. We found that there are already many existing platforms that try to solve the job-to-be-done for those who pursue entrepreneurship. However, they are not necessarily focusing on the specific needs of graduate students. These platforms offer a variety of services including networking, funding, education, advice and employment. This research gave us valuable insights which inspired our team to bring our concept to the prototype phase. However, we discovered that those platforms lack legal support and advice for issues such as patents, paperwork, immigration, licenses and financial challenges.
AngelList AngelList is a platform that connects anyone who is passionate about the startup industry. It provides a place for startups, angel investors and job-seekers to achieve their dreams of improving the world through social entrepreneurship. In addition, the platform offers information regarding trends in startup industry, market data, salaries, valuations, incubators and college alumni statistics.
“A platform where the world meets startups.” Key Insights • LinkedIn for Startups: One-Stop Platform to connect everything for entrepreneurs, investors, job seekers and researchers. • Small to Big Investments: Open to small investments starting from $1,000 and allows startups to raise funding from angel investors free of charge. • Network Service: Connect to trustworthy investors and partners who have similar goals by viewing their past activities. However, messages only can be sent to people who you follow or you are followed by. • Alumni Connections: Easily find and contact alumni who are actively engaging in the startup industry. i.e. Parsons School of Design Startups: 144 Companies, 411 Alumni, and 35 Jobs. • Smartphone App: Only provides AngelList updates including announcements, funding and job opportunities.
LinkedIn LinkedIn is a leading business-oriented platform that connects qualified professionals with companies. Since it launched in 2003, LinkedIn attracted more than 364 million members in over 200 countries and territories as of January 2015. Furthermore, there are over 39 million students and recent college graduates on LinkedIn and they are LinkedIn’s fastest-growing demographic, according to the LinkedIn Newsroom. More importantly, LinkedIn recently acquired Lynda.com for $1.5 billion which is the fourth-largest deal in social media history. According to the CIO, this acquisition tops the $1 billion Facebook paid for Instagram and the $1.1 billion Yahoo paid for Tumblr.
LinkedIn Acquired Lynda.com “I think the most interesting aspect of this deal is that LinkedIn will be able to directly attribute e-learning to career opportunities and advancement.” Source: Why LinkedIn spent big on Lynda.com by CIO
Key Insights • The acquisition is an important move for both LinkedIn and Lynda.com because it connects people and also gives them access to educational resources and professional development. • LinkedIn is expected to nurture the new generation of professionals by building a sustainable network in the long-term. • This acquisition of the top educational platform is expected to become a major turning point for LinkedIn’s future as a leading educational platform targeting already successful professionals by connecting people to opportunities.
IDEO Design Kit IDEO.org provides IDEO Design Kit online courses in partnership with Acumen, a non-profit global venture fund using entrepreneurial approaches to solve world poverty via micro finance. IDEO is a global innovative design consulting firm that first developed the design thinking methodology to challenge traditional solutions. The IDEO Design Kit program offers 7-week free online courses for those interested in learning about human-centered design. This course is designed with a group-guided learning structure and requires participants to form an offline team of two to six people. In the past four rounds, over 56,000 individuals from 148 countries that have already participated in the program.
Key Insights • Online and Offline Integrated Education: Human-centered design courses are all about collaboration. Guided by the online supporting materials, team members collaborate together in person to build actual solutions to world problems. After forming teams, team members are required to meet each week to learn the human-centered design process via reading and workshop materials. The course provides a completely new environment that fully integrates online and offline experiences and that motivates students and enables team members to learn from each other. • Networking Opportunity: The course strongly encourages participants to complete course materials as a group rather than individually. If a participant is unsure of group formations, the platform provides a function to find and contact other members nearby via an inbox service. Furthermore, participants have the opportunity to share learnings and solutions, ask questions and get to know other course participants from around the world via an online community hosted on NovoEd. • High Quality Materials: High-quality supporting material are used throughout the course which are created by the Stanford d.school and IDEO. In addition to high quality material from IDEO and the Stanford d.school, interactive video clips recorded by renowned innovative leaders give tips to tackle issues that entrepreneurs may face during the entire process.
Meetup Meetup is an online social networking portal that facilitates offline group meetings in various localities around the world. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face.
Users enter their postal code or their city and the topic they want to meet about, and the website helps them arrange a place and time to meet. As of May 2015, the company claimed that it has 21.59 million members in 181 countries. There are 200,357 groups and 555,116 monthly meetups.
Key Insights • Networking: Bring people together who have similar interests. • Familiar User Interface: Overall function and UI are similar to the Facebook event feature. • Easy Communication: Contact members in the same group via Meetup inbox. • Easy Access: Users can easily find groups and events by simply entering a zipcode. • Business Model: Meetup receives revenue by charging fees to administrators of groups, currently at $9.99 to $14.99 per month depending on the payment plan.
General Assembly General Assembly is an educational institution that transforms ideators into innovators through education in technology, business and design at fourteen campuses across four continents. It was established in 2011 as an innovative community for entrepreneurs and startup companies. Now it offers various types of online and offline courses including 12-week full-time and part-time boot-camp style courses as well as various workshops and networking events. Topics range from learning digital design (including web development, user experience design, product design) to digital marketing and business skills in all levels from beginner to expert.
Key Insights • Long-term Support: General Assembly also offers various resources and opportunities for community members to further grow. • Corporate Digital Training Program: Offers online and offline education for executives, marketers and sales teams to boost their ability in the digital age. Topics include digital marketing, half-day field study workshops, and product management in the digital age. • Hiring Platform: Offers a personalized portfolio space for graduates from General Assembly to post their skills, specialties, work experience and education. Recruiters in the digital industry can explore and connect with graduates from General Assembly free of charge. • Become an Instructor: By actively recruiting both part-time and full-time instructors with relevant educational training, General Assembly efficiently sustains a group of community members and utilizes existing talent.
What We Envision Building upon our insights and the discoveries we made through the interviews, journey maps, an in-depth study of the competitive landscape, and prototyping we have been able to validate our assumptions and nail down the job-to-be-done. On one hand, students pursuing entrepreneurship and innovation on an academic level with ideas they want to develop into businesses, need guidance beyond what they get in classrooms, and on the other, international students who are a majority here at Parsons need special and centralized assistance with legal matters to pursue entrepreneurship in the US.
We need access to a collaborative space where we can take our ideas beyond the prototyping phase - a platform where we can grow our networks, receive personalized mentorship and legal advice, learn about funding opportunities and programs that provide extensive experiential learning, and find resources to help us bridge the gaps in areas requiring special skills such as business, design, prototyping and technical support.
Smoke Test
Vision Statement OUR USERS Parsons students on the path of entrepreneurship
JOB-TO-BE-DONE
VISION
Turn ideas into solutions
A collaborative space, where students can grow their network, receive personalized mentorship and gain easy centralized access to all the resources that will help bring their ideas to life.
INSIGHT Today, students at Parsons do not feel they have the required mentorship, guidance and resources to bring their ideas to life.
Let’s Collaborate One thing that seems to remain relatively stable even in times of great change is human behavior. When analyzing our job-to-be-done and its solution, we noticed that it is a system-level problem where the system here is The New School. A problem like this is difficult to solve when taking into account the institution’s size. According to Managing Change by Design, “The reason for this is simple: although most systems have evolved over time from something small and simple to something larger and more complex, their growth has not typically been managed in a holistic way.” The design of the system is across multiple individuals or groups where their efforts have been localized in their “bubbles” hence resulting in silos that are hard to bring together, perpetuating the lack of a collaborative mindset. Us, as designers, through human centered design and research, believe through our solution, we will piece together these silos for the end users. The solution framework we are proposing brings forth this holistic viewpoint and refocuses on the School’s reason for being which is the students and their needs, which is why we are illuminating the difficulties and problems of our existing system.
“Finding ways to connect with people and institutions possessing new knowledge becomes increasingly important. Since there are far more smart people outside any one organization than inside, gaining access to the most useful knowledge flows requires reaching beyond the four walls of any enterprise.”– John Hagel
Parsons
1:55 PM
100%
The E-Mentor E-Mentor is a personalized online platform and mobile application that can provide Parson’s students with all the information, advice and resources, they need to bring their ideas to life. Based on their majors and legal status in the US the app will customize the relevant data for each student from day 1, so they can start making connections and building their network, get mentorship, learn about policies and regulations related to immigration and entrepreneurship, find programs and workshops that compliment their academic courses with experiential learning and that they can benefit from early-on, and last but not least gain access to funding opportunities and a rich and centralized pool of technical resources and support.
Mobile Application 1:55 PM
Parsons
100%
Search
NETWORK MENTORSHIP LEGAL ADVICE Parsons
1:55 PM
100%
Parsons
1:55 PM
100%
FUNDING LEARN BY DOING BRIDGING THE GAP
Favorites
Chat Room
100%
NETWORK
Z X C V B N M space
My Ac
Search
A S D F G H J K L
123
Mentorship
1:55 PM
Parsons
Q W E R T Y U I O P
Home
MENTORSHIP
return
LEGAL ADVICE FUNDING LEARN BY DOING BRIDGING THE GAP
Favorites
Chat Room
Home
Mentorship
My Ac
ccount
ccount
1:55 PM
Parsons
100%
Search
Parsons
1:55 PM
100%
Search Alumni, Student, Department ...
Strategic Design and Management Abouhosn, Sara M.S.
Contacts
Strategic Design and Management Karageuzaian, Roupen M.S.
Chat Room
Strategic Design and Management Karam, Nancy M.S.
Events
Strategic Design and and Management Strategic Design Management Tyson, Laura B.F.A
Kang, Joonsoo M.S.
Favorites
Strategic Design and Management Morton, Jack B.F.A.
MENTORSHIP
Chat
Chat Room
Home
Mentorship
1:55 PM
Parsons
My Account
100%
Favorites
Chat Room
Parsons
Home
Mentorship
1:55 PM
My Account
100%
Search
Search
NETWORK
GODELNIK, RAZ Specialty: Innovation, Sustainability, Business and Design strategies
MENTORSHIP
Number of Mentees: 3/5
Professors
ARAKJI, REINA Specialty: Innovation Strategy
Professionals
Number of Mentees: 1/5
LEGAL ADVICE
POBINER, SCOTT Specialty: Design technology, Design research, and interface design
FUNDING
Number of Mentees: 4/5 SEBEK, ANEZKA Specialty: Design technology, Design research, and interface design
LEARN BY DOING Favorites
Chat Room
Home
Mentorship
Profile
Strategic Design and Management Tyson, Laura B.F.A
LEGAL ADVICE
Favorites
100%
Strategic Design
Search by Name or Department to Chat
NETWORK
1:55 PM
Parsons
My Account
Favorites
Chat Room Home Mentorship Number of Mentees: 4/5
My Account
Favorites
Chat Room
Home
Mentorship
My Account
Online Platform
The E-Mentor Blog
Network
A culture of collaboration, sharing and networking A culture of collaboration is an essential and integral part of any successful entrepreneurial ecosystem that fuels innovation and leads to valuable breakthroughs. However at Parsons, and at odds with what it teaches, within the school itself this culture is not yet well established and only limited to small clusters of students and professors that are as scattered and disconnected as the school’s actual physical locations. A solid network of students, faculty and alumni is absent, both on a social and a professional level, putting us at a big disadvantage compared to other schools like NYU where the focus on networking is impressive and empowering. Through the E-Mentor we aim to enhance the collaborative experience by building a strong networking engine where students can have access to an extensive pool of contacts to add to their circle, stay updated on events and make lasting connections
Mentorship
One-on-one support from successful professionals Another form of support that is lacking at Parsons and that the students could benefit from immensely is mentorship. Mentoring programs have proven to be the most powerful and effective strategy for professional development within organizations as well as on an individual level. Providing powerful role models that students can look-up to and refer to for one-on-one advice will be a great added value for the school and even more so for the students helping them overcome personal, academic and professional challenges in their pursuit of entrepreneurship and innovation. Mentors can be recruited from Parsons circle of alumni and instructors, as well as senior professionals associated with the school’s network, and through our platform paired up with mentees based on expertise.
Legal Advice
Policies and regulations related to immigration and entrepreneurship When it comes to regulations, policies and paperwork most people are clueless and without legal advice or expert help, navigating through such processes and requirement is almost impossible, let alone if you are an international student in a country with strict regulations like the US. This has proved to be a major obstacle for Parson’s students on the path of entrepreneurship in general and an even bigger setback for international students wishing to establish startups in New York and the US. ‘International Student and Scholar Services’ are taking the lead on providing immigration advice for internationals but still such resources are not well centralized or comprehensive enough especially when it comes to employment and entrepreneurship in particular. As such, through E-Mentor, our aim is to provide students with adequate legal support and give them easy access to legal advisors that can guide them through all matters related to their immigration and business plans, as well as a centralized and extensive library of all existing data covering such issues.
Funding
Opportunities for financing ventures Funding is another big obstacle that students face on their entrepreneurial journey. Most of us don’t know where to start and the school can play a big facilitating role to help its young army of innovators make it to the finish line by: 1. Establishing and providing funding opportunities through special school led funds, scholarships, and challenges 2. Providing loan facilities 3. Exposing outstanding initiatives to VCs, facilitating contact with them, and helping students develop pitching skills 4. Partnering with platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to offer students maximum exposure All these resources will be consolidated through the E-Mentor allowing students to easily find what they are looking for and get the advice they need.
Learning by Doing Hands-on skills development and experiential training
As discussed earlier, experiential learning has become an essential part of the learning process that allows students to acquire the job-specific technical expertise they need to startup their own business. So to compliment academic studies, the school can offer further opportunities to develop the necessary hands-on skills by offering extra curricular programs where students can engage in real-life projects and gain an in-depth understanding of the various stages of developing a business. These ‘boot camps’ will provide the rigorous training needed to prepare young entrepreneurs to face the challenges of venturing into the world of start-ups. In addition, the platform will update its users on ongoing workshops and seminars as well as internship and job opportunities.
Again it is important to stress that having all these resources in one place, instead of having to look for them across various platforms and announcements as is the case right now, will greatly enhance the student experience at Parsons, insure that the schools efforts are seen and well targeted and increase participation, engagement and collaboration.
Bridging the Gap A centralized database of useful resources
Again using the collected insights and pain-points that students face when trying to develop their business ideas, we made a list of the resources that everyone agrees are missing links that create obstacles and slow down progress. Those with design backgrounds require assistance with business planning, marketing and finance, and the other way around. Prototyping and technical support are also integral to the process and not easy to navigate through - finding the right supplies and services is always a dilemma especially when you’re in a foreign environment. So to help bridge the gaps the platform will provide access to all these resources by helping students find fellow collaborators with the required skills, providing them with locations of suppliers around the city as well as online tools and tutorials, and giving them access to a rich library of previous work done by Parsons students that they can reference and learn from. Also leveraging a network of expert vendors to support the development of business ideas can be a great added value. This can work in a variety of ways, such as including references in proposals, getting pitch support, preparing custom surveys, and conducting phone interviews, all in the goal towards better understanding the different industries. Examples of companies that can be partnered with are: AlphaSights, Atheneum Partners, Cognolink, Coleman RG, Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG), Guidepoint Global, and Insight Alpha.
Incentives Viable solutions are ones that are capable of existing, developing and growing when conditions are favorable. Given that some of the programs are new, it is only normal for discrepancies between demand and supply to exist. It is however indispensable to start with a holistic solution that is culturally engraved early on because every day after the start is an opportunity to gather data, build upon a network and grow. Students, faculty and alumni are the success of the school. One of the key performance indicators for many of the Graduate Schools is the number of successful startups that come to life from their own. It is what they pride themselves with and how they market their programs to recruit the best talent, especially the top, up and coming entrepreneurs who are looking for mentorship and guidance. This is one of the main indicators that reflects the school’s success and it is therefore everyone’s incentive to work collectively towards this goal. Beyond existing and growing in its own environment, a successful solution is also one that can develop in other contexts. When proven successful in the New School, the E-Mentor platform can easily either merge or be rebranded and sold to other institutions. Revenues lie both in the system itself and the riches of data that can be curated based on the context. The platform is in its very nature scalable and becomes exponentially more valuable with each passing day. Therefore, the possibility to either merge with and/or sell to other institutions sets the limits that much higher.
Many graduates feel disconnected from their alma mater once they graduate. A few alumni events, newsletters, e-mails and the occasional interactions make for shallow relationships that add little value to both parties. Having the E-Mentor from the very first day is a powerful tool to stay connected throughout Graduate studies and beyond to grow the network post graduation. In a data driven world, Data collection for the university is of immeasurable value. The eLibrary feature for instance is one such database of riches; it will hold a diversified portfolio of sanitized decks, frameworks, best practices - all within reach of a search query - this would in many instances save months of work not to mention a plentitude of quality in house resources.
Our innovation is incremental but one that can create many radical innovations.
Taking the Lead
“We are members of The New of the world’s most cultura of the quintessential Metro to produce change, to make
Beyond Parsons, we are part of The New School’s creative environment, exposed to the different disciplines and talents, who practice to design innovative solutions for the future, along with peers from other programs. We are members of The New School in New York, we are citizens of the world’s most culturally diverse community, at the center of the quintessential Metropolis. This is by excellence the place to produce change, to make a real impact.
We are working towards building a lifetime global network of thought leaders and innovators, and interacting with a pool of talented colleagues and mentors. Our school has a plethora of valuable partners, Alumni, supporters, and advocates. It is through these connections that we will excel. These are the experiences that will ignite the artistic, academic and professional senses within us, enabling us to speak the business language of global brand leaders and successfully communicating our ideas to lead the innovation process and become the change makers of the world.
ew School in New York, we are citizens ally diverse community, at the center opolis. This is by excellence the place e a real impact.�
The Team Aboulhosn, Sara Prior to pursuing her Masters in Strategic Design & Management at Parsons, Sara worked at M&C Saatchi Lebanon as a senior Brand designer focusing on bringing high profile brands to life. Her experience spans from retail, editorial, corporate and television branding. Prior to that, Sara worked as a Brand Strategist at FITCH Doha where she bridged the gap between design and strategy. Passionate about design and its power to influence human behavior and driven by curiosity and the need to continuously learn and evolve.
Karageuzian, Roupen As a senior consultant of the consumer & retail practice in Strategy& (formerly Booz & Co.), Roupen has contributed to many projects across a diverse track of clients, including both multinational and regional conglomerates. Learning the Parsons design thinking method, he aspires to expand his family business, a prominent shirt manufacturing and wholesaling enterprise in the Middle East.
Kang, Joonsoo Prior to making his big move to New York City, Joonsoo was a PR and creative design specialist at Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations and communications firm. He handled various corporate communication activities like PR, digital marketing strategy and design for various multinational corporations including the Ford Motor Company, FedEx, HP, LG and the Walt Disney Company.
Karam, Nancy Nancy is an upbeat brand and visual communication designer, currently pursuing her graduate degree in Strategic Design and Management at The New School. While working for international agencies like WonderEight, Leo Burnett, and M&C Saatchi over the past 12 years, she helped create, design and reshape a rich and diverse portfolio of brands. As a next step she’s hoping to finally follow her longing and focus on wellbeing to help people redesign and transforms their lives.
Ismail, Hussein Now being at the transitional point between the first and second year of an MFA in Design & Technology, the prior experience was being a CSR specialist and a travel counselor before that in Egypt. Looking forward to be involved more in human centered design and socially innovative projects.