A Design-driven Entrepreneurship Program

A Design-driven Entrepreneurship Program

The Brief.

The GO Program is an award-winning design-driven entrepreneurship initiative that helps entrepreneurs and organizations who have the courage to design the next economy with human-centric businesses. Being based on three factors -the ecosystem, the entrepreneur and the idea- the program utilizes design and technology as tools to achieve its aim.
You can see more about the GO Program here: www.thegoprogram.com

The Approach.

GO is based on three factors: the ecosystem, the entrepreneur and the idea. These three components constitute a holistic approach for the analysis of entrepreneurs based on:
Where you are: Being an entrepreneur in an emerging market and an advanced market are two completely different things. Teaching entrepreneurship in an emerging market is by its very nature not the same as teaching it in Silicon Valley. Nor can we keep talking to people in emerging markets about successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley such as Steve Jobs. The markets conditions should clearly be defined.
Who you are: Instead of us lecturing who you should be, this concept encourages people to understand who they are and discover their own entrepreneurial patterns themselves.
What You Want to Do: Human-centricity is the key of the GO Program. For this purpose design is used as a tool at the ideation stage in order to create human-centric businesses. This design-driven approach can create more radical innovation than the “technology push” and user-centered approaches. However, at different stages of market development, entrepreneurs may choose incremental innovation, where user-centered strategies may apply. We decide this critical strategy during the workshops.

About This Project.

Entrepreneurship programs mostly focus solely on the idea or an idea of a “lone hero entrepreneur.” However, a start-up’s success is based on three parameters, as our program covers: the ecosystem, the entrepreneur and the idea. The GO program focuses on developing all three dimensions in a start-up company.
The GO Program was awarded innovation fellowship by Behance Network in New York in May 2012 and featured in GOOD magazine and Stanford Innovation Blog in the US. It was also recognized by DMI and OpenIDEO.