2017 Parsons ELab Annual Report

ELAB ENTREPRENEURIAL LAB

A DESIGN-DRIVEN BUSINESS LAB DEDICATED TO ENTREPRENEURSHIP PRACTIVE AND RESEARCH.

PARSONS ENTREPRENEURIAL LAB

THE PARSONS ELAB // 2 0 1 7 R E P O R T

www.parsonselab.com www.twitter.com/parsonselab www.facebook.com/parsonselab

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT Joel Towers, Executive Dean // Parsons School of Design Jane Pirone, Dean // School of Design Strategies

THE ELAB TEAM DIRECTOR Rhea Alexander, Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management Research Director and Founder of ELab Co-Director MS SDM // School of Design Strategies

RESEARCH COLLABORATOR 2016-17 Aaron Fry, Associate Professor of Studio Methods

Student Administrators 2016-2017

Research Assistants 2016-17

Lissa Fedrizzi

Rose Pember

Vanya Mittal

Vinay Kumar Mysore

Francisca Severino

Aryanna Martin Steven Hubbard, PhD

Student Administrators 2017

Volunteers 2017

Rose Pember

Jimmy Hagan / Aminata Ndeye

Alexandra De Rienzo

Sergio Venegas / Holly Cargill

Adrianna Kruyt

Aryanna Martin / Karishma Doshi

Victor Michaud

Silky Kadakia

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CONTENTS OVERVIEW ................................................ 6 //NEW YORK CONEXT City Wide Initiatives

//NEW SCHOOL CONTEXT Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative

//THE CONTEXT FOR ELAB

THE ELAB ................................................ 12 // OUR FOUNDATION What it means to be design-driven using our own “design intelligent” process What is means to be impact or purpose driven

// ELAB’S STRATEGY The Six Pillars: Inform, Empower, Collaborate, Act, Launch, Give Back

// ELAB’S DELIVERY 12 - Month Fellowship Innovate NYC Community Support & Research

// ELAB’S INCUBATOR MODEL Testing a Distributed Model Our Model Goals

// MENTORSHIP & PARTNERS

Mentorship Structures Core Partners

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2017 ACCOMPLISHMENTS ........................ 30 // INFORM Education & Social Media Growth

// EMPOWER Community Events

// COLLABORATE The New School & Beyond

// ACT Innovate NYC

// LAUNCH 2017 12-Month Fellowship 2017 Curriculum & Offerings Fellows Progress & Evaluation ELab Fellows’ 2017 Progress Across the Board

// GIVE BACK Conferences & Publications Advisors Mentors

ITERATION & RESEARCH ........................ 62 // YEAR REFLECTION // RESEARCH PROJECTS & NEW INITIATIVES // REPORTING OUR RESEARCH Conference Proceedings Grants & Development Data Collection & Reports 2016 & 2017 Fellowships: Company Progress

// LOOKING FORWARD 2018 Fellows 2018 Goals

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OVERVIEW //NEW YORK CONEXT

City Wide Initiatives

//NEW SCHOOL CONTEXT

Intrapreneurship Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative

//THE CONTEXT FOR ELAB

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NEW YORK CITY AS A GROWING HUB FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP It’s no news that entrepreneurship is at an all time high; with the onset of the global freelance economy, analysts predict by 2020 over half of our national economy will be driven by freelancers and entrepreneurs. Within this growing trend, New York City is the fastest growing startup technology center in the country today according to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Digital.NYC, the official online hub of the New York City startup and technology ecosystem. Picking up on the entrepreneurship trend, nationally, universities across the city and nation have initiatives to support recent graduates in the startup space with incubators, accelerators. In NYC, these include NYU Acre cleantech accelerator, Columbia Entrepreneurship (CE), Pratt’s BF+DA, City College’s Zahn Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and more.

Mayor De Blasio also has launched WE NYC (Women Entrepreneurs New York City) which is aimed at expanding the economic potential of women entrepreneurs across the five boroughs. New York City leads the nation in the number of women entrepreneurs thriving in our neighborhoods. A white paper released by SBS and supported by Citi reveals that women-owned businesses across the five boroughs employ over 190,000 people and generate approximately $50 billion in sales. In the past decade, female-owned firms grew by 43%, compared to 39% in overall business growth and 25% growth in male-owned businesses (WENYC, “Unlocking the Power of Women Entrepreneurs in New York City”2015).

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THE CONTEXT FOR ELAB It is within this context and discourse that the Parsons Entrepreneurial Lab was born in 2014. Nurtured within the School of Design Strategies, the ELab caters to recent alumni from all university programs, providing entrepreneurial education, events, research, and support mechanisms for The New School alumni and interested students.

Over the past three years, ELab has served over 800+ individuals at the New School with events and workshops related to entrepreneurship. The ELab entrepreneurship incubator has provided funding, mentorship, and skill building workshops to 21 teams comprised of nearly 75 people. Of those selected for these programs, 70% of teams have been led by women and more than half by students from underrepresented communities.

OUR HISTORY The Elab’s concept was built upon an external partnership that Desis Lab and Dean Mears forged between CSI (Centre for Social Innovation) and Parsons’ School of Design Strategies to award hots seats to business-building students in graduate programs. In 2014, Professor Rhea Alexander was asked to manage the program as part of the external partnership committee. Building upon this relationship, coupled with practices emerging from the new collaborative economy and inspiration from distributed business models, Professor Alexander developed proposal for a new type of academic business incubator during her research that would potentially be low cost and fill a growing need at the university. The relationship with CSI was leveraged and expanded to create a pilot program whose objectives were to award hot seats in sector specific co-working communities and incubators across the city with an integrated support program that involved individualized mentorship, benchmarks and roadmaps, community, workshops and support in the critical first year of inception.

At the end of 2014, Alexander was awarded funds from the Dan and Gloria Bohan Foundation and the School of Design Strategies to build and test the initial framework through 2015, 2016 and again in 2017, and the Parsons Entrepreneurial Lab was founded.

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The Parsons ELab was designed to address an emergent need to bridge the academic experience with applied practice for graduate students at Parsons School of Design, to help transition them from student to successful entrepreneurs and changemakers.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AT THE NEW SCHOOL In 2014 The New School pulled together a cross-school work group and partnership with Career Services and International Student and Scholar Services to develop a pilot informational program for international students called “INTERpreneurship.” Also across campus the Parsons Faculty Committee has set up a task force to research and document any and all university-wide initiatives that support entrepreneurship. This initiative is coupled with the development within SDS of the MS program in Strategic Design and Management (the fastest growing graduate program, launched in 2012) where at the time, approx 30% of the graduates were developing business ideas they wish to launch after graduation.

In 2017 with generous support from The Kauffman Foundation’s Inclusion Challenge Grant (420K), Elab partnered with the New Challenge (another extra curricular program offered through the school of Public Engagement) to build a curricular entrepreneurial initiative across the University, The Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative (IEI) was founded to help undergraduate/graduate women and people of color with business development. IEI is a university-wide initiative that supports early-stage entrepreneurial leaders in developing the mindsets, skills, and sense of purpose needed to thrive in a rapidly changing world. The

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initiative aims to catalyze the creation of an inclusive economy by making entrepreneurship education, resources, and networks more accessible to students from underserved backgrounds at different stages of the entrepreneurial journey.

IEI draws on The New School’s design-infused curriculum to provide students with the support through courses, co-curricular activities, practical training, expert coaching, and funding, across three core programs:

Venture Lab A semester-long course designed to support students developing financially sustainable ventures with the potential for scalable impact.

Graduate Fellowship A two-year merit-based scholarship and cohort-based experience designed to support high-potential leaders from diverse backgrounds.

Graduate Curricular Pathways Graduate Curricular Pathways // Identifying clusters of graduate-level courses in topics related to impact entrepreneurship

ELAB IS A DESIGN-LED BUSINESS LAB THAT IS DEDICATED TO THE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE OF DESIGN-LED IMPACT ENTREPRENEURSHIP.

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THE ELAB //OUR FOUNDATION What it means to be design-driven using our own “design intelligent” process What is means to be impact or purpose driven

//ELAB’S STRATEGY The Six Pillars

//ELAB’S DELIVERY 12 - Month Fellowship Innovate NYC Community Support & Research

//ELAB’S INCUBATOR MODEL Testing a Distributed Model Our Model Goals

//MENTORSHIP & PARNERS

Mentorship Structures Core Partners

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OUR FOUNDATION

The ELab is a design-driven business lab dedicated to entrepreneurship practice and research. Core to our research and programming development are the principles of design and impact-- applied collectively to the ELab governing entity and entrepreneurship research, our annual incubator fellows and their curriculum, and the Innovate NYC Do School program.

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE DESIGN-DRIVEN: USING OUR OWN “STRATEGIC DESIGN” PROCESS The Parsons Strategic Design process takes a holistic and systemic approach, fusing the iterative design thinking process rooted in design research with economic rationale, business logic, and organizational reality. Looking at the complexity and context of a business within the analysis. We emphasize realignment of all the parts of the organization, not just its innovation processes taking a bottom up co-creative approach to innovation. Our focus is on the research, co-creation and prototyping to iteratively inform our incubator model, our business development, and all programming that ELab offers the consortium of University schools and broader entrepreneurial community. .

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE IMPACT OR PURPOSE DRIVEN In contrast to the traditional academic incubators, ELab is distinguished by Parsons’ design thinking methodologies and the progressive roots of The New School. ELab has social entrepreneurship, sustainability, and TBL (Triple Bottom Line) values and principles embedded in its DNA. It aims to support and strengthen student evolution from academicto-applied practice through extra-curricular programming, workshops, and mentorship in a variety of practical business and lean design processes to enable them to develop a minimum viable product and gain traction, preparing their new ventures to compete and thrive in the post-recession landscape.

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ELAB’S STRATEGY

THE ELAB PILLARS ELab has created a six-point strategy plan to deliver these values of design-led research and entrepreneurship education. This strategy is intended to target all the stakeholders within Parsons’ entrepreneurial ecosystem at all the stages in the growth of an entrepreneur.

With this strategy, the ELab aims to: 1. Build awareness and promote entrepreneurship within the community 2.Support entrepreneurs and help them thrive through creation of a solid program structure and network 3. Engage experienced entrepreneurs to co-create a collaborative environment 4. Support startups in a self-sustaining ecosystem around entrepreneurship and innovation

INFORM MEETUPS & WORSHOPS -GRADUATE STUDENTS

GIVE BACK

EMPOWER

MENTORSHIP PROGRAM -LONGTIME ALUMNI

BOOTCAMPS -GRADUATE STUDENTS

LAUNCH

COLLABORATE

12 MONTH FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM -RECENT ALUMNI

STARTUPTREE -GRADUATE STUDENTS

ACT INNOVATE NYC FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM -UNDERGRAD & GRADUATE STUDENTS

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01 // INFORM ELab offers current students, both undergraduate and graduate, a series of opportunities to learn about entrepreneurship, business development, and to try their hand at entrepreneurial practice. These opportunities include workshops, information sessions, and fireside chats -- both in-person, and livestream through ELab social media. These events serve to inform the community both about ELab and about entrepreneurship practice.

02 // EMPOWER Having informed students of ELab and program offerings, ELab provides the community several participatory events to help students and alumni better prepare to apply for ELab’s 12-Month Incubator Fellowship and other partnership opportunities. ELab offers bootcamps, design jams, and support preparing for ELab-sponsored programs for all students, INNOVATE NYC. ELab additionally empowers students with options to work as research assistants and administrative staff as part of the governing team.

03 // COLLABORATE ELab relies on and advocates for cross-community collaboration. ELab forges relationships inside the University community and outside within the greater NYC entrepreneurial ecosystem. Engaging all potential stakeholders, ELab leverages a decentralized model hoping to spread collaboration between and across communities.

ELab has collaborated internally with the University to help with the Parsons Festival, the Alumni Relations department, and the MS Strategic Design Program, as well as externally with the XRC Retail Accelerator, and the DO School, among others.

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04 // ACT ELab prepares current students to act through the INNOVATE NYC Program, established with a consortium of universities and the Do School, funded by the Newman’s Own Foundation,

which gives current students across the New School the opportunity to

work with students from across NYC academic communities on a social entrepreneurship challenge.

05 // LAUNCH Core to the ELab cycle of support and programming is ELab’s 12-Month distributed incubator program. We help recently-minted alumni to launch impact businesses through our fellowship and entrepreneurial curriculum. Through the 12-Month incubator, our goal is to support the needs and development of alumni entrepreneurs as they transition from initial business validation into the market, including testing, prototyping, and the core

06 // GIVE BACK The last stage of our strategy is to get the greater New School community involved by inviting long term alumni to mentor our young entrepreneurs in the various area of business development, ranging from product development to strategy, branding and user experience.

The strategy behind giving back is founded on two methods: one-on-one mentorship with the incubator fellows through our timebank mentorship, and the network engagement of ELab alumni and partners through fireside chats and program support. The ELab also gives back to the greater academic ecosystem through our research, presentations at international conferences and published papers. Elab considers [academically-oriented] research both as a means of sparking dialog within the entrepreneurial community and to codify methods, processes and practices developed through its programs.

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ELAB’S DELIVERY PURPOSE DRIVEN The Elab delivers on our six-pillar strategy through our two core programs -- the 12-Month Fellowship and the INNOVATE NYC program -- as well as community support for entrepreneurship, participation in international conferences, publications and our dedicated research. Within these categories, ELab is able to deliver on our mission to promote entrepreneurship within the community, support entrepreneurs, engage experienced entrepreneurs and support startups within our community of self-sustaining entrepreneurship and innovation.

DISTRIBUTED INCUBATOR // ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT The Elab Incubator is a 12-Month fellowship that supports final semester graduate students and recent alumni founding new initiatives or companies.

We believe that building the economy of the future is a collaborative effort and we aim to assist our students and recent alumni of The New School graduate programs in their journey of (becoming entrepreneurs) through 12 Months of design-driven, entrepreneurial support. Through the ELab Fellowship, second year graduate students and recent alumni – upon graduation to 4 yrs out – who have proven business ideas, can benefit from internal and external support for a year, including memberships to coworking communities and their spaces, discounts on services, mentorship, professional business advice, strategic networking, informational workshops and panel discussions. Alumni with long years of experience are additionally able to give back through endowment and mentorship to the incubator, helping to support our mission with their expertise to raise the bar of success in our community.

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INNOVATE NYC // UNDERGRADUATE ENGAGEMENT In 2015-16 the ELab was a founding member of a consortium of ten New York City based universities (Columbia, Cooper Union, NYU, CUNY, Brooklyn Law, and more), the “Do School”, and “NYC EDC” (New York City Economic Development Corporation) and funded

by Newman’s Own, to offer “Innovate NYC”, an immersive program of learning by doing in social entrepreneurship. This program is designed to be open to current students across the New School university to apply for 3 fellowship seats and spans 7 month including an intensive 1 Month summer capstone. This network brings current students from across the city’s universities together to collaborate using design thinking for social innovation.

Rhea Alexander, Founding Member and Director of Elab is on the advisory board along with academic leadership across the city such as: Martha Kanter, former under secretary of education for the Obama administration and now distinguished visiting professor at the Steinhardt school of NYU. Now in its third year, Innovate NYC utilizes a proven approach originally developed by the DO School for Oxford University and leading organization such as Siemens, Daimler, and the United Nations. Within the program, the students develop entrepreneurial methods, work with diverse groups of world-class practitioners, and create real change. Parsons ELab is proud to partner with Innovate NYC to promote impact entrepreneurship through design-driven methodologies.

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SUPPORT // A GROWING COMMUNITY

Year over year, the ELab has continued to offer post-curricular and extracurricular events and workshops for design-driven impact entrepreneurs, and for research in entrepreneurship and in innovation in entrepreneurship education. This programming we offer targets is open to the community of students, faculty, staff and alumni to supplement their individual journeys through the university experience.

Leveraging the success of the Incubator, the ELab’s goal has expanded from not only providing support and resource for our Fellows, but to help build a community of support alongside IEI at the University that addresses needs of inspired entrepreneurs through public programming.

Our goal is to create a supportive lab where community members can participate and support one another at any stage in their relationship with the university, as well as build a lively community to strengthen entrepreneurship networks at the at TNS.

RESEARCH // COMMITTED TO ITERATION The goal of the Entrepreneurs Lab as a research project is to develop new methods of evaluating entrepreneurial success in impact entrepreneurship and the efficacy of the distributed model of an academic incubator. As a longitudinal study, the director, Rhea Alexander and her colleagues and student research fellows aim to share knowledge and find out if the impact of participating in this type of extracurricular immersive, programming may have on them in regard to traditional measurements such as job creation and economic impact but also to attempt to measure long term qualitative effects participating in a program such as this and building a startup regardless of its success or failure has on their career trajectories navigating a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous).

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METHODOLOGY

With generous grants from the New School and Dan and Gloria Bohan Foundation, Rhea Alexander and the ELab has been able to start to collect data through surveys, interviews and rubrics for research and iteration as this itself is an experiment and pilot of a new decentralized model of an academic incubator.

In our research we are creating feedback loops, benchmarks assessments, and KPI assessments to see if learning certain behaviors and iterative methods coupled with pragmatic skills can be used to condition people’s reactions and nudge them towards better, more desirable strategies and actions.

As people receive real time contextual information about their approach, they can calibrate their behavior and make a choice about their next course(s) of action. These feedback loops begin with data capture when a certain action or behavior is recorded.

This is followed by contextual data sharing, during which processed data is delivered to the user in a way that triggers a need for action. These data can be accompanied by suggestions of various potential actions to take. The final step is action –the subject has processed the data, assessed its relevance, and– and then makes a choice informed by the options presented. Such action is once again captured, to trigger another feedback loop.

ELab practices the methods it teaches –using feedback loops to improve the value it brings and share findings with the community and its stakeholders. Ultimately, ELab aims to apply this design research throughout the program timeframe, and for at least five years out, using tools to track qualitative and quantitative data, and focusing on data visualization and other effective forms of communication, of its findings, to stakeholders.

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OUR INCUBATOR MODEL CURRICULUM Motivated by the goals of sharing, testing, learning, and launching, we offer the following tools and activities to aid the success of our Incubator Fellows’ startups, which are integral to the design-driven curriculum we offer and integral to our community support and research.

Meet-Ups that enable fellows, mentors and partners to share information and skills/services, such as user experience design or graphic design.

Design Jams and Hackathons aiming to attract passionate people with various expertise to collaborate on answering fellows’ immediate needs;

Fellows-Only Website Resources in which fellows and administrators can share and exchange useful information, websites and tools

Membership in Incubators and Coworking Spaces such as NY Designs, Centre for Social Innovation, Civic Hall and LMHQ, and ALLEY.

Mentorship ran by long standing alumni and industry experts, as well as one-on-one startup sponsors who are part of the ELab team.

Networking Events that enable fellows to meet potential collaborators or service providers, learn more about what other entrepreneurs are working on, and exchange resources and skill-sets.

ELab Perks to help startups better run their businesses - Google Cloud Platform, discounts to InVision, Sketch, and access to legal clinics for pro-bono work.

Research studies and developing of new tools including white papers, data mapping, and network visualization.

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ELAB BENEFITS

SUPPORT

• Support in identifying business opportunities and connections

• Access to Mentorship/coaches

• Development of the fellows’ knowledge around business

• Access to Network Partnerships

• Increase the networking opportunities

• Network workshops

• Improve the ability to achieve goals and solve problems

• Pitch nights

• Increase the chances for success

• Website + Resource library

• Mentor check-ins • Membership at co-working space • Elab tailored workshops • Timetables + Benchmark Goals • Network discounts

• Support team thru mentor and peers to help you over the hurdles

• Guest Speaker Talks • Alumni Connections

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TESTING A DISTRIBUTED MODEL Beyond our core ELab is a prototype or model of today’s distributed workplace with its lean operating budgets, lack of a specific physical locale, and distributed (rather than centralized) model for mentorship. The ELab does not have a physical space but it is housed, conceptually, within The New School.

We test this distributed model for both ELab resources and within our 12-Month Incubator.

The ELab leverages connections across the New York community to place Fellows within coworking community spaces or external incubator spaces tailored to their needs, allowing them to integrate and embed themselves within communities with other startups. This allows the ELAb to:

SCALE EASILY //

We don’t experience physical limitations of space for events,

workshops and curriculum programming, and have the flexibility to place events across partner spaces and The New School spaces at limited to no cost. Additionally, without a centralized office hub for our Fellows, we can expand or contract Fellowship size year by year, and Fellows are given freedom to work out of their assigned space.

BUILD A NETWORK //

Distributing our Fellows across NYC Startup communities

creates an expansive network for ELab, which benefits all stages of ELab programming.

Our network model is a system where value is co-created and exchanged, in a distributed way, through this network of participants–whether Fellows or open-event attendees. At our core, we also quickly grow our core number stakeholders and community size with this model.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF CITY RESOURCES //

Our incubator Fellows are at the

disposal of the resources they’re surrounded by. By distributing its physical location, ELab increases access to the resources, and people that each space offers, and the Fellows have proximity to a wider range of resources to address their needs– whether the need is users for research, Founders for interviews, other startups, social entrepreneurship-oriented individuals, and more.

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As a distributed fellowship, ELab’s network of value-exchange across fellows, spaces and mentors underlines several components as core leverage points for the success, and research on, this distributed model:

• Existing networked business models • Value exchange networks • Peer-to-peer sharing of access to goods and services • Bottom-up values exchange • User-generated content • Design processes of problem solving, iteration and lean prototyping

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MENTORS & PARTNERS MENTORSHIP Mentorship programs are a critical part of ELab pillars and our strategy. These programs are targeted toward professionally established alumni and professional experts willing to give back to Parsons and to nurture the next generation of design entrepreneurs, as well as those who may see personal benefit and professional gratification in working with young startups. The ELab has tested various methods of delivery for mentorship over the past 3 years, including:

1:1 Mentorship (2015-2016) Mentorship in the form of one-on-one 12-Month mentorship in which fellows are paired with a startup through regularly meetings over the course of the year with a focus on helping fellows reach their KPIs and benchmarks.

Timebank Mentorshop (2016 - 2017) Timebank mentorship is delivered in the form of “office hours,” in which experts can donate their time for one-on-one meetings as needed and requested by the incubator Fellows, permitting the Fellows to engage with these mentors at any stage along their development, and based on the expertise of the mentor.

ELab Team Venture Associates (2017-2018) The most recent form of mentorship provides Incubator Fellows a “sponsor,” or an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, that is part of the governing ELab team and is their go-to ground level contact for the program curriculum. This sponsor checks in with his/her/their assigned startup and Fellows to follow up on KPIs, benchmark data, and other progress, needs or goals.

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STUDENTS JOURNEY

TO BECOMING ENTREPRENEURS University Selection PROJECT SEEDED

PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE NEW CHALLENGE

PROJECT DEVELOPED

Project

PROJECT AWARDED AND ACTUALIZED WITH PROOF OF CONCEPT

BUSINESS LAUNCHED, ITERATED, AND TESTED

GRADUATION AND APPLICATION TO ELAB

Startup

The New School IEI Parsons Program enter the new school get introduced to entrepreneurship through 30+ courses

DESIRE TO TURN PROJECT INTO A BUSINESS

Sustainable Business created

ELab

Impact Entrepenerial Initiative is a university-wide program that supports early stage socially impactful entepeurnial leaders with networks, education and resources.

advanced workshops business programming around entrepreneurship funding mentoring 1 year incubation co-working spaces networking

AC AD E M I C S P HE RE

Applied Practice Job Creation Economic Growth Self fulfilment

Developed Business Alumni Giving back Endowment to The new school

MA R KE T P L ACE

IN 2020, over 50% of THE U.S. economy will be driven by freelancers & entrepreneurs -- FOrbes How are we supporting our students at the New School for the new economy?

““The benefit of a place like ELab is the diversity of the mentors. Having legal experience, business development, strategy and financial resources at your disposal is huge for getting your startup off the ground.”” ~ Nicholas Morozowich, 2017 Elab Fellow and founder of Empathecary

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PARTNERS Part of our core values is to provide an optimal journey for our students, which is reliant upon and strengthened by ELab’s growing network of partners. We created strong partnerships within the New School and with external partners in order to design a system that would benefit the whole ecosystem.

Our 2017 partners include sector specific co-working spaces (Centre for Social Innovation and NY Designs Incubator), as well as Dorm Room Fund, Cardozo Law Clinic, Brooklyn Law Incubator and Google Cloud Platform, NY Code Academy, Thicket Labs, and the Entrepreneur’s Roundtable Accelerator.

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“The Center for Social Innovation has been a great place to work. The community of start-ups helps drive your enthusiasm, and it helps test ideas with each other.”

-Ashley Starks Amin 2017 Elab Fellow and founder of Civic Fleet

Alumni Office

Provost’s Office

Development Office

Mentors

University Alumni Grantees

ELAB

Communities

Strategic Partners Spaces

New Challenge

Career Services Faculty Professional Networks

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Legal office

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2017 ACCOMPLISHMENTS //INFORM Education & Social Media Growth

//EMPOWER Community Events

//COLLABORATE XRC Labs Alumni Office Data Visualization Department

//ACT Innovate NYC

//LAUNCH 2017 12-Month Fellowship 2017 Curriculum & Offerings Fellows Progress & Evaluation ELab Fellows’ 2017 Progress Across the Board

//GIVE BACK Conferences & Publications Advisors Mentors

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ELAB IS A DESIGN-LED BUSINESS LAB THAT IS DEDICATED TO THE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE OF DESIGN-LED, IMPACT ENTREPRENEURSHIP.

Alumni Day May 2017

ELab Team Member Adrianna Kruyt chatting with interested alumna.

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EDUCATION, EVENTS & SOCIAL MEDIA The ELab is proud to present substantial growth in the 2017 year across the University community, demonstrating collected interest in entrepreneurship and ELab programming.

Our success can be divided into two key categories across which we inform our stakeholders of ELab events, involvement and entrepreneurial activity at The New School.

OUR EDUCATIONAL SUCCESSES

Annual Info Session // Informing the community about the ELab program, the team followed up on the Parsons ELab Info Session - September 16th in 2016 with a successful information session for the upcoming 2018 Fellowship. See more here: Parsons ELab Info Session - September 12th, 2017. We saw over 70 people register for and attend the 2017 Information Session, marketed specifically to our target audience for the 2018 Fellowship -- 2nd year graduate students and recent alumni.

Parsons Reunion // As part of informing a greater audience beyond current students, Elab was invited to participate in the Parsons Reunion with the support from the Alumni Office to market our mentorship opportunity. Throughout the event we recruited longterm alumni with over 10 years experience and expertise to mentor and our current fellows use the opportunity to market and test their products.

Alumni Day May 2017

Fellow Limassol Zok talking with potential mentor.

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INFORM

INFORM

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MEDIA & SOCIAL: A BROADER AUDIENCE Beyond receiving engagement from the community at the Information Session and alumni events, ELab’s social media audience has grown substantially. We began live-streaming our events in 2017, and the Information Session alone received 128 views, demonstrating the interest our community has shown for ELab. Part of this traction was due to a ELab Spotlight campaign we initiated to strengthen summer engagement, when students are not at school. to help promote our success paired with public relations for our startups, we wrote spotlights on specific fellows and shared regularly throughout the summer. These highlights are picked up by alumni office and by the greater university social media which reaches 96.9K followers on Facebook, 77.9K on Twitter.

Our desire to inform spread beyond out blog posts as well, featuring relatable content shared to our media that would educate our follower base on tips, recommendations, news and products for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial education. Our goal was to go beyond sharing ELab-relevant events, and attract followers interested in the education that we support.

OVER 50%

INCREASE IN PAGE LIKES // 01/01/17 - 01/01/18

OVER 168

LIVE VIDEO MINUTES VIEWED // 09/16/17 - 01/01/18

OVER 1.4K REACH

DEMO DAY 2017 // 11/08/17

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INFORM

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EMPOWER

EVENTS DELIVERED FOR ELAB & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT In 2017, ELab hosted a total of 12 events, including 5 Workshops for the Incubator Fellows, 1 Design Jam, the Midway Presentations, Pitch Night, Demo Day and the Information Session.

Of the 12 events, 50% of these were open to the public and actively engaged the New School community of students and alumni, with the hopes of engaging an entrepreneurial education. Reviewed below are our most successful events that speak to ELab’s empowerment of the entrepreneurial community at the New School and the variety of mentors and alumni we engage with:

ELab Startup Design Jam // April 1, 2017 This year ELab partnered with Parsons School of Design for its 4th annual MS Strategic Design and Management Design Intelligence conference. Focused on Designing for Global Volatility, the Conference was a day full of student organized events, presentations and workshops. ELab Fellows had a dedicated lounge to test their products and services with more than 120 people who attended the event.

NEW SCHOOL STUDENTS REGISTERED: 53 EXTERNAL COLLABORATORS: 13 EVENT PAGE VIEWS: 281 TOTAL DESIGN JAM ATTENDEES: 115+

Design Jam / April 2017 Fellow Angela Bronza explaining her company, Threadcycle.

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EMPOWER

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MidWay Presentations // April 28, 2017 The Midway Event is an exciting night in which the 2017 Fellows shared their progress since they joined the ELab in front of an audience of judges, investors and our broader community. Each company had five minutes to present their idea, touching on the problem they’re solving, the solution they’re providing, the business model, market positioning, their teams, accomplishments in the past 6 months, and goals for the next 6 months. Following each presentation is an opportunity for Q&A by the audience and judges.

The same rubric that was created for the Pitch Night is

used during this event,

administered to the audience and judges to collectively determine the impression of progress and overall interest the Fellows’ pitches generated. The results produce a comparative chart, and was given to the startups as helpful data points to leverage in the continued iterative build of their businesses. businesses. These progress reports can be found in the Research Section of the Annual Report.

“We had a strong end of the year. We tested our hypothesis and had the expected results: cotton,

“

viscose, and rayon fabric scraps can be processed through pyrolysis and turned into biochar. Next year we will focus on developing and executing B2B and B2C go-to-market strategies.”

Midway Presentations / April 2017 Fellow Danny Dang and Kate

~ Angela Bronza, ELab Fellow and

Wallace present their accomplish-

founder of Threadcycle

ments with Beyond ABC.

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EMPOWER

NEW SCHOOL STUDENTS REGISTERED: 44 GENERAL ATTENDEES REGISTERED:

TOTAL REGISTERED: 112 JUDGES: 17

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Demo Day // November 8, 2017 As we marked our calendars for the end of ELab’s 12-Month Fellowship Program, it was time to get our fellows up on stage again to pitch their businesses and compare their progress according to milestones set in Midway Presentations.

PRESENTS

DEMO DAY Mark you calendars for our 2017 Cohorts final presentations!

NOV 8TH 6:00 - 8:00 PM 65 West 11th Street Wollman Hall B500 Demo Day / November 2017 Fellow Nick Morozowich presents Empathecary

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with Shawn Nelson, Founder & CEO of LoveSac We hosted an open-to-all panel with our mentor, and Parsons alumni, Shawn Nelson who founded LoveSac in 1995. He won a $1 million investment on Fox’s “Rebel Billionaire” show in 2005 and became President of Virgin Worldwide with Richard Branson’s companies for a time. Shawn grew Lovesac to a 60 store (and counting) chain with an ever expanding suite of patented furniture inventions. Lovesac was named America’s fastest growing furniture retailer in 2013.

Shawn was joined by group of expert panelist who all have a range of knowledge on how to grow capital and raise funds. Our panelists included Julia Straus, the CEO of Tula- a budding online skin care retailer.

Bradley Skaf, a senior associate at Gridiron Capital

Growth a Private Equity Firm, and Jeremy Schrag, founder of NYC Starter and the Growth Hacking Newsletter who is also serial app entrepreneur.

Go Fund Yourself / October 2017 Shawn Nelson and panelists for an intimate discussion with Fellows about fudning.

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EMPOWER

Go-Fund-Yourself Panel // October 4, 2017

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COLLABORATE

ENGAGING DEPARTMENTS WITHIN THE NEW SCHOOL, AND PARTNERS OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL The Elab aims to continuously collaborate and build a strong community and network both internally within the University, and externally with the wider startup community and its support network.

Each year we partner with the Alumni Office, Student Success Office, Program Directors across TNS and Parsons, Administration, and Faculty, to encourage cross-school collaborations, and partnerships on research, grant applications, program offerings, marketing and exposure. Currently we have partnered with the MA Data Visualization Program Director, Aaron Hill, as well as with Ben Rubin of the Data Arts Lab for our current research endeavour, the The Entrepreneurial Genome Project. We also are in partnership with the XRC Lab and ERA (Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator).

In 2017 we also forged a closer relationship with XRC and have decided in 2018 to try co-delivering the curriculum and program offering to both our fellows jointly.

XRC LABS ERA ACCELERATOR NYC INNOVATION COLLECTIVE

NEW SCHOOL ALUMNI RELATIONS NEW SCHOOL STUDENT SUCCESS

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uate-focused Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative (IEI), which new to 2017, was created to build upon and grow the education for entrepreneurship for udnergraduate and early stage students.

In collaboration with the former New Challenge founder and director Michele Kahane and Program Administrator, Elizabeth Werbe, our Director Rhea Alexander collaborated on the grant application over the Summer and Fall of 2016 to apply for the Kauffman Inclusion Challenge for Women and People of Color.

In January 2017, we were awarded 420K and began to implement the proposed for credit program for students.

READ MORE ABOUT IEI HERE: http://blogs.newschool.edu/tnschangemakers/entrepreneurship/

IMPACT ENTREPRENEURSHIP INITIATIVE

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COLLABORATE

Inter-school and department ollaboration was critical to helping establish the undergrad-

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INFORM OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH INNOVATE NYC The Do School’s Innovate NYC // Summer 2017 The 2nd Year of the Innovate NYC program focused on innovation in mobility. The program goal aimed to create a community-centered ride-sharing solution that encompasses the entire city, while remaining economically viable.

The challenger, Brooklyn Navy Yard, aims to boost New York City’s economic vitality by creating and preserving quality jobs, growing the City’s modern industrial sector and its businesses, and connecting the local community with the economic opportunity and resources of the Yard. To do so, they are doubling the number of jobs within the Yard by 2020 from its current level of 7000. However, this incentive brought about the question: How might they accomplish this job increase without adding a single new car to their parking lots – as parking is already at maximum capacity?

In June, the Innovate NYC students worked with renowned experts and top social change makers to develop and implement a hands-on solution that they delivered to the Yard.

For the Yard, then Innovate NYC offered a critical way to solve a core operating challenge.

For the students participating the program is a chance to develop real world, 21st century skills for careers in social impact.

REPRESENTING THE NEW SCHOOL: Two graduate students, Fulya Turkmenoglu and Akshati Mehrish, from the Strategic Design and Mangement were selected from a pool of applicants to represent The New School among the consortium of school applicants at Innovate NYC.

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ACT

Akshati Mehrish

“

“Working with The Do School has given me an opportunity to use design thinking and innovative approach to solve the mobility challenges faced by the Brooklyn Navy Yard. At the Do school, I worked with fellow peers from other NYC schools to find an innovative, sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions for mobility issues to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”

Fulya Turkmenoglu

“Creativity from diversity! Turning the ideas into an executable solution with an

“

amazingly diverse group of people, using design thinking tools by considering different aspects of the process in such a short time and being part of such a creative team was a great experience. No matter how tight your deadline is when you have a great team, and the right people around you to get advice and to exchange thoughts and ideas, there are no barriers to creative design solutions.”

Innovate NYC 2017 Participants from all schools

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LAUNCH 12-MONTH ELAB FELLOWSHIP AS A DISTRIBUTED INCUBATOR - 2017 Following a successful year with 11 startups in the 2016 ELab selection of Fellows, in 2017 the ELab team iterated on the fellowship selections aiming to test the distributed incubator with early stage startups and current students to pilot the IEI experience.

Selected after a rigorous application round, each startup had to present in a 10-minute pitch format at the annual Pitch Night (2016) to a jury of 14 judges, consisting of EIab’s external partners, investors, mentors, alumni and Parsons faculty, and an audience of students and guests. From 17 applicants, 5 were selected, with the following criteria: ELab’s quantitative rubric that the 14 judges and the audience filled out, the qualitative notes that the judges provided on each project and team, and finally the interest of the ELab’s partner spaces in the missions and work focus of the startups.

Demo Day / November 2017 Rhea Alexander, the ELab admin team and 2017 Incubator Fellows

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THREADCYCLE ANGELA BRONZA (M.S. SDM ‘17) CHLOE GUSS (M.S. SDM ‘17)

Offseat

Threadcycle’s mission is to collect and recycle textile waste from garment manufacturers in order to reduce landfill use and energy waste and to preserve valuable raw materials. Threadcycle’s long-term goal is to develop a system for recycling large quantities of textile waste. Their offer in stage one was comprised by DIY Craft Kits & Workshops, and evolved to focus on recyling process and outcome.

Offseat, previously known as WalknTalk is a mobile app that enables users to plan walking meetings based on the features that address aspects of scheduling, inviting people, and customizing the route based on the type of the meeting, the destination, and desired actions to be taken along the way.

LIMASSOL ZOK (M.S. SDM ‘17) & KATYA ROZANOVA

NICK MOROZOWICH (M.S. SDM ‘17)

Empathecary, previously known as Kosi, is a service supported by a digital platform that simplifies patient access to medical marijuana and builds personalized and meaningful connections between patients and caregivers.

& EVA REBEK

CIVIC FLEET

Civic Fleet’s purpose is to make government services easier to navigate, universally accessible and effectively delivered. Civic Fleet provides a set of tools to help people navigate the social security and medicare/aid system.

ASHLEY AMIN (M.S. SDM ‘17)

KATHERINE WALLACE (B.S. DT ‘17) DANNY DANG (B.S. DT ‘17)

Beyond ABC, previously known as Zer, is an augmented reality game-design agency that aims to engage Generation Z with substantial news and topics of social justice. They are creating bite-sized experiences that allow users to get a deeper look at important issues such as gender issues, climate change and global affairs. Their goal is to become the go-to destination for the younger generation to access news on augmented reality technology.

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LAUNCH

2017 FELLOWSHIP SELECTIONS:

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2017 FELLOWSHIP CURRICULUM & OFFERINGS Because of the early stage in which most of the fellows were in, 2017 is the first year that the ELab implemented a more rigorous year schedule of curriculum and workshop deliverables. ELab conducted a total of 5 workshops for Fellows, a shop-session, scrum session in addition to the public panels and milestone events.

The year was divided into 4 core phases:

PHASE 1: DESIGN INTELLIGENCE

Lean + Business Model Discovery 101: with Jen Van de Meer

Business Canvas 101 (testing for unique customer segments and value prop, iterate until fit) Vision building

Startup Law 101 - Business Structure Cardozo Law Clinic with Aaron Wright

Business structures Learning about IP, copyright and incorporation

PHASE 2: VALIDATION

Testing the "Front Stage" + Prototype Development with Christopher McPherson

Business model, marketing or prototype testing

Public Forum Test (Design Jam)

Public testing + Pitch Presentation at Design Intelligence conference

PHASE 3: STORYTELLING AND AUDIENCE BUILDING

Storytelling Workshop with Rhea Alexander

How to pitch, preparing for Midway Presentation

Social Media Workshop + Social Media Guidelines

How to strategize on social media, tips on how to optimize your strategy

Midway Presentation

A panel of judges and investors invited to give constructive criticism tracking the fellowsprocess and growth.

PHASE 3 (CTD.): STORYTELLING AND AUDIENCE BUILDING Focus onstrategies needed for startups entering a tech-saturated world. Strategies included contextualization ELAB REPORT 2017 // PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL OF DESIGN Media Literacy with Rhea Alexander of brands, ownership and rights on the internet, navigating 48 social and public image.

Fireside chat w Chris Henry

What to look for in a back-end developer

Business model, marketing or PARSONS ENTREPRENEURIAL LAB prototype testing

Public Forum Test (Design Jam)

Public testing + Pitch Presentation at Design Intelligence conference

PHASE 3: STORYTELLING AND AUDIENCE BUILDING

The curriculum was composed of a design-driven process, and How to pitch, preparing for implemented over the Storytelling Workshop with Midway Presentation course of the year to reflect a design-influenced entrepreneurial development, including Rhea Alexander

key focus on value proposition impact, market segmentation from the bottom-up and

Social Media Workshop +

How to strategize on social media, tips

user-centered perspective. The mentors served as tokey resources along this process to on how optimize your strategy Social Media Guidelines guide and advise with essential information - legal, tech, fundraising - that the design A panel of judges and investors invited to give constructive criticism tracking the fellowsprocess and growth.

process not directly inform.

Midwaydoes Presentation

PHASE 3 (CTD.): STORYTELLING AND AUDIENCE BUILDING Focus onstrategies needed for startups entering a tech-saturated world. Strategies included contextualization of brands, ownership and rights on the internet, navigating social and public image.

Media Literacy with Rhea Alexander Fireside chat w Chris Henry

What to look for in a back-end developer How to hire the development team This scrum session was aimed to help fellows focus on their business model and sales pitch.

Shop Day with ELab team

PHASE 4: RESOURCING

Go Fund Yourself with Shawn Nelson

This is a peer activity. Startups focused with one-on-one ELab team sponsors to nail pitch and practice.

Prep Demo Day

Optional one-on-one help with pitch deck and/or rubric evaluation

Final demonstration of business status, business success, process and year progress.

DEMO DAY

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Testing the "Front Stage" + Prototype Development with Christopher McPherson

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CURRICULUM DETAIL & DELIVERY: WORKSHOPS & EVENTS

ELab Workshop 1 - January 7, 2017 - Jen Van der Meer In this workshop, the fellows reviewed the lean strategy and worked on their business model canvases.

ELab Workshop 2: Startup Law 101 with Aaron Wright // February 7, 2017 Workshop dedicated to the importance of legal for startups on their path to launch. Taught by our mentor Aaron Wright from Cardozo Law School’s Law Clinic and held at Cardozo law school, NYC. This workshop covered intellectual property registration processes - including patents, trademarks and copyright - and the legalities that startups need to cover when setting up new companies. Business structures (choose at the end of this phase if you are C-Corp aiming for funding, and LLC aiming to self-fund, an NGO, or something in between).

ELab Workshop 3: User Testing & Validation // March 18, 2017 This session started with delivering curriculum on user testing and validation with Rhea Alexander (Director) and Christopher MacPherson (Frog Design), followed up by the importance of social media with mentor and media specialist, Amarie Baker. Fellows were asked to prepare for afternoon User Testing, where they engaged with a number of mentors and invited relevant stakeholders to test and validate.

Workshop 4: Storytelling & Fellows Scrum Session // April 14, 2017 Facilitated by Rhea Alexander (Director), we asked the fellows to bring a completed version of the Storytelling canvas to the workshop. We wanted them to tell us their story taking into consideration the latest changes they’ve made. We were looking for them to update their benchmark reports and tell us what they’ve accomplished and where they have failed.

This was in anticipating for the midway presentation on April 28th. We wanted the fellows to envision their presentations and think about how to properly present their work. The fellows gained a better understanding of what we were looking for in their presentations and all benefited from this session.

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Facilitated by Rhea Alexander (Director) and Alexandra de Rienzo graduate student from Media Studies Program and Elab Admin, this workshop deliberated on strategies needed for startups entering a tech-saturated world. Strategies included contextualization of their brands vis a vis conglomerates, the digital divide, ownership and rights on the internet, navigating online media, public image and social media.

Fireside Chat with Chris Henry, former CTO @Behance // July 11, 2017 Chris Henry is a technologist who has devoted his professional life to building technology and teams that create truly useful products. Previously, Chris led technology teams at Behance, the leading online platform for creatives to showcase and discover creative work, and later at Adobe, which acquired Behance in 2012.

Chris Henry joined us for an intimate ELab fireside chat. This was a wonderful opportunity for one-on-one conversation with a reputable NYC Technologist, who have experience in the design industry for a company empowering the creative fields. Fellows got to get amazing insight and advice from Chris and the fireside chat enabled a lively discussion between the mentor and fellows.

Scrum Session: Shop Day // October 9th This scrum session was aimed to help fellows focus on their business model and sales pitch to end customers. Here the Elab team role played as consumers, asking pointed questions about the product and service for sale, the costs for these services and the value one initially perceives.

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LAUNCH

Workshop 5: All Things Media // July 6, 2017

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FELLOWS PROGRESS & EVALUATION

THREADCYCLE ANGELA BRONZA (M.S. SDM ‘17) CHLOE GUSS (M.S. SDM ‘17)

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FELLOWS PROGRESS & EVALUATION

Offseat LIMASSOL ZOK (M.S. SDM ‘17) & KATYA ROZANOVA

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FELLOWS PROGRESS & EVALUATION

NICK MOROZOWICH (M.S. SDM ‘17) & EVA REBEK

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FELLOWS PROGRESS & EVALUATION

CIVIC FLEET ASHLEY AMIN (M.S. SDM ‘17)

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FELLOWS PROGRESS & EVALUATION

KATHERINE WALLACE (B.S. DT ‘17) DANNY DANG (B.S. DT ‘17)

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ELAB PROGRESS ACROSS THE BOARD Company and Fellow Highlights from 2017, from all past ELab Cohorts.

GABOR TANKOVICS // DARTBOARD FOUNDER, 2016 FELLOW FIRST REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE NEW SCHOOL EVER SELECTED FOR THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF ENTREPRENEURIAL TECH TRANSFER’S (NCET2) UNIVERSITY STARTUP CONFERENCE & DEMO DAY (2017)

ASHLEY AMIN

// CIVIC FLEET FOUNDER, 2017 FELLOW

1 OUT OF 6 COMPANIES SELECTED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CIVIC TECH LEADERSHIP PROGRAM IN SUMMER 2017

CHLOE GUSS & ANGELA BRONZA // THREADCYCLE FOUNDERS, 2017 FELLOWS TRAVELED TO BERLIN TO PRESENT THREADCYCLE AT THE SUSTAINABLE FASHION CONSUMPTION SYMPOSIUM

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GIVE BACK Giving back is critical to ELab’s model to maintain our regenerative value -- bringing positive influence into our 12-Month Fellowship, producing substantive and meaningful value through research by attending conferences and writing research papers for peer reviewed publications, and collaborating with our stakeholders.

ELAB GIVING BACK Within the last 2 years, Alexander and Fry presented on the topic of the Elab at 2 conferences in 2017, including the 21st Century Academic Forum Conference with the title “Practicing What We Teach: Iterative Design Methods for Innovation Education” at Harvard, as well as the Design4Health Conference at Swinburne in Melbourne, Australia. You can read more about this in the Conference & Publications section.

“

“The benefit of a place like ELab is the diversity of the mentors. Having legal experience, business development, strategy and financial resources at your disposal is huge for getting your startup off the groud. ” ~ Nick Morozowich, 2017 Fellow

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The ELab Mentorship Program started with 3 mentors in 2015, expanded to 16 mentors in 2017, and now maintains connections with well over 20 current and past mentors.

Elab is comprised of faculty, volunteer longterm alumni, experts in our extended community and partners complimented by student administrators and researchers, our fellows and alumni fellows.

2017 // 12-MONTH TIMEBANK MENTORS

Aaron Wright

Amir Rouzrokh

Ann Marie Puente

Chen Cheun

------------------------

------------------------

------------------------

------------------------

Technology & law, early

Cloud computing and

Legal strategy, business

Applications

stage startups, financing,

software development,

strategy; creative counsel

programming,

legal, UI/UX and business

internationalization of

and innovation business

applications analysis.

development

products, digital payments

management

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GIVE BACK

GIVING BACK THROUGH MENTORSHIP

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2017 // 12-MONTH TIMEBANK MENTORS

Min Kim

Christopher MacPherson

Edward Cardimona

------------------------

------------------------

------------------------

Industrial design, product

Technology, business

Solutions developer at The

development and product

strategy, and

New Schoool. Applications

strategy

security expert

programming, applications analysis.

Elizabeth Enck

Ian Spangler

Julia Doran

------------------------

------------------------

------------------------

Service design, design

Designer management,

Video branding,

strategy, brand strategy,

developer and product

production, direction, and

organizational design

management, technology

media editing

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2017 // 12-MONTH TIMEBANK MENTORS

Nicole Quinn

Samar Labdhib

Sandra Hoefler

----------------------

----------------------

------------------------

Business Development,

E xperience Strategy,

Acquisition, brand

business strategy. retail

pharmacy, innovation

marketing, cross media

strategy

strategy

communication

Sean Dillon

Shawn Nelson

Tom Cusack

------------------------

------------------------

------------------------

Digital business

Entrepreneurship, retail and

Lawyer, IP, contract

development, sales

manufacturing , leadership

negotiation and general

strategy and storytelling

development

law for startups

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ITERATION & RESEARCH //YEAR REFLECTION //RESEARCH PROJECTS & NEW INITIATIVES //REPORTING OUR RESEARCH Conference Proceedings Grants & Development Data Collection & Reports 2016 & 2017 Fellowships: Company Progress

//LOOKING FORWARD 2018 Fellows 2018 Goals

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YEAR REFLECTION

... ON THE 12-MONTH INCUBATOR We learned a great deal about the the ELab’s efficacy and distributed structure between the 2017 Cohort and the 2016 Cohort. The difference between the two years created space to observe how influential the initial progress of startup concepts was at the fellowship point of entry, paired with the enrollment status of each Fellow. These two factors had the most effect on the year-progression of the startups.

... ON OUR GROWING COMMUNITY As we head into our 4th year, counting the pilot year of the incubator offering, our network is growing and we are expanding resources. This is incredibly exciting news, as we’re widely recognized within the New School community and have make strides to expand our recognition beyond New School territory, continuing to build a name for design-led entrepreneurship and our community.

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COLLECTED LEARNINGS AND INSIGHTS

Initial reflection and analysis of Incubator Midway reports, final status, workshop and year progression, network strength and stakeholder engagement has produced the following findings:

Student and public attendance at events is best when there is direct forms of engagement.

Our Response: After our second year of permitting public voting for the Pitch Night and the Midway, it’s clear that directly engaging stakeholders with real event and fellowship impact is a successful way to both engage the community and educate more people about entrepreneurship. We hope to explore more methods of this for future events -- including, Q&A, Live-tweet questions, and more forms of voting.

Early-stage business concepts or pre-validation startups are too early-stage to progress within in a 12-month distributed model and working with fellows who work full time makes it difficult to progress and stay on track.

Our Response:

The 2017 Cohort of Fellows were in the very early stages of

development and most all worked full time outside of the startup. Being very early required substantial research and concept validation, so much of the traction generation, prototyping and market response was not reached during the one incubation year.

Acquiring data is increasingly difficult with past fellows.

Our Response: This finding reflects our need to prioritize the ELab Network development as a collected and/or visualized entity, beyond our own mailing lists.

We also will prioritize and plan for a system of engagement — social and research oriented — that continues to strengthen network bonds.

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Clarity of communication across a distributed network can be strenuous and result in confusion, especially as our network grows.

Our Response: Implemented a centralized communication source and reliable source of news. To iterate midway through the year, the ELab team began sending weekly newsletter emails to the fellows, populated with required events, curriculum notes, suggested opportunities and useful tools relevant to their stage of business.

Examples of content include events at the Center for Social Innovation, product trials and releases on Product Hunt or Gary’s Guide, or impact and diversity oriented networking events found across NYC.

CONSIDERATIONS FOR OUR MODEL: These findings produces a question important to consider as we move into our 3rd Annual Cohort for the Incubator:

Does centralized communication work against or in favor of our decentralized model?

In reflection, management and administration is critical to the success and maintenance of a distributed system for an Academic Incubator. Our communication to Fellows, and to Stakeholders, is routed through the ELab team, but the physical location of ELab remains distributed -- spread across New York City, but within concentric circles around the co-working community spaces.

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ELAB RESEARCH PROJECTS & NEW INITIATIVES Mapping the Entrepreneurial Genome of the New School In Spring 2017 Alexander was awarded a School based Research Grant from the School of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design within the University to map the entrepreneurial genome of the community. The study we hope to conduct throughout Fall 2017 through 2019 is contextual and aims to complement ELab’s 5-Year Longitudinal Research.

ELab will produce a holistic perspective on entrepreneurship born from The New School, past and present. Our goal is to assess the impact of entrepreneurial alumni on their local economies, and the scale and impact of their entrepreneurial ventures. This comprehensive survey will map the impact our entrepreneurial alumni have had economically, socially, creatively -- in whole, display the New School entrepreneurial genome.

We initiated this project with a core partnership with ThicketLabs -- run by female entrepreneur, alumni and partner Deepthi Welaratna. Then later partnered with Aaron Hill (Director) + Steven Hubbard, PhD (Grad Student) from the Data Visualization graduate program to develop a research methodology and communications strategy to gather data then develop interactive data visualizations.

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(CTD:) Mapping the Entrepreneurial Genome of the New School COLLECT // We want to measure and map the numbers and locations of self-declared entrepreneurial alumni over time, and will provide metrics to calculate the impact of entrepreneurial alumni.

MAP // Subsequently, we will use these metrics to project entrepreneurial impact locally and globally further refined by social, cultural and/or economic value.

IMPACT // The goal of this research initiative hopes to illustrate the return on investment our community provides from entrepreneurship.

DEVELOP // The resulting holistic perspective will contextualize and initiate greater consideration and proof of entrepreneurship at The New School, and provide context for the many growing endeavors around entrepreneurship developing at the university, including but not limited to the ELab. SHARE // We aim to share the results of this study in many forms, but primarily hope to create a timeline of entrepreneurship and alumni impact over the past 100 years to celebrate the Centennial.

KEY PARTNERS The Data Visualization Department The Center for Data Arts The Alumni Relations Office

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Visualizing the ELab Network with StartupTree Building on early endeavors from 2015, we revisited our goal to migrate our community onto a platform where all stakeholders can engage with one-another.

As a response to many of our findings over the years, this new initiative hopes to serve as a tool not only for our distributed model, but for our past fellows, current fellows, mentors, and New School community as a whole looking to learn and engage with entrepreneurship.

This project and platform will serve as an essential medium for three of our six pillars -Inform, Empower, Give Back -- where communication with the community and broader engagement is both critical and highly-desired.

About StartupTree: https://startuptree.co/

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REPORTING OUR RESEARCH CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS: This year, Alexander and Fry presented on the topic of the Elab at two conferences in 2017.

1. // ELab presented at the 21st Century Academic Forum Conference held on September 27-29, 2016 at Harvard, and presented paper was be published in the journal 21st Century Academic Forum in 2017.

The paper titled, “Practicing What We Teach: Iterative Design Methods for Innovation Education”, was included in the Conference Proceedings. It was written and presented

by Rhea Alexander, Founder and Director of the Elab and Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management, along with Aaron Fry, Associate Professor of Design Strategies.

The paper went into circulation in mid-2017, and can be found in Vol. 11, No.1 of the 21st Century Academic Forum Conference Proceedings, ISSN: 2330-1236.

Find the Paper here: http://www.21caf.org/5th-hrd-conference-proceedings.html

2. // Alexander and Fry represented ELab in November 2017, when they submitted an extended abstract and presentation request, subsequently accepted to the Design4Health conference at Swinburne in Melbourne, Australia on December 4-7, 2017. The two presented a deck at the conference and the findings presented, titled “Strategic Design and the Future of Work-and-Wellness,” has been submitted in January 2018 for the Taylor and Francis Journal Design for Health - a rigorous double blind peer reviewed journal. The submission is comprised of a 47-page paper that includes 5 case studies and data from 5 companies out of the ELab. Read the Draft Review here: https://newschool.academia.edu/RA

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GRANTS + DEVELOPMENT

KAUFFMAN GRANT In partnership with The New Challenge Director’s Michele Kahane and Elizabeth Werbe and Parsons ELab’s director Rhea Alexander, The New School was awarded by the Kauffman Foundation a $420,000 two year grant through its Inclusion Challenge to support women and people of color startup. In 2017, the Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative at The New School was founded.develop and there were several rounds of assessment.

DAN AND GLORIA BOHAN FOUNDATION For 3 years in a row Alexander and the Elab have been generously supported by the Dan and Gloria Bohan Foundation.

SCHOOL OF SDS SCHOOL BASED FUNDS, STUDENT ASSISTANT RESEARCH FUNDS AND FACULTY RESEARCH FUNDS For the last three years, Alexander has applied and been rewarded with various School funds to continue her research and community support of impact entrepreneurship.

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DATA COLLECTION & REPORTS

In 2017, we were able to develop and conduct different types of surveys for the various stakeholders. Our main goal with surveys is to evaluate the efficacy of the program by understanding if fellows have learnt and grown, and if our relationship with partners through this distributed model has long term sustained value to its stakeholders.

Each event that we held both for the Fellowship, as well as for our other ELab pillars, were surveyed to assess the crowd response and engagement. While we learned that the best engagement comes from events structured in a participatory format, we also gained a lot of momentum.

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EVENT SURVEYS // FINDINGS & RESPONSE

57%

Bootcamp Workshops

29%

Design Jam

14%

83% Very Useful

1-2

3-5

5+

1 on 1 time with mentors at event Go Fund Yourself Shawn Nelson:

78%

Very Useful Useful

22%

ELab Kick-Off Info Session

17%

Not Now

Very Likely

68%

52% Very Likely

Will You Apply?

Somewhat

28% No Way

31% Somewhat Likely

4%

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DEMO DAY ELab startups share their progress and struggles throughout the year in front of a panel of judges, investors and ELab community a year after they started the Fellowship Program. al rounds of assessment. The following are results on the event from the event attendees.

90%

Attendees found the event promoted entrepeneurship at The New School

Attendees would be interested in participating in Demo Day again

80%

Attendees who would recommend the Elab to other students.

90% 56% Attendees found the event promoted entrepeneurship at The New School

PITCH NIGHT

100%

Attendees would be interested in participating in Demo Day again

80% 23%

Attendees who would recommend the Elab to other students.

69%

ELab applicants pitched their ventures to a panel of judges and the ELab community to win

56%

a chance at being part of the 12 - month fellowship program. These are some of the results from surveys distributed to all event attendees.

100% 100% of attendees found the event interesting.

100% of attendees found the event interesting.

to 23% 69% think that Elab’s work 69% 22.22% found the overall promote entrepreneurship within startups’ progress in the last the The New School community 6 months was considerable. is great.

22.22% found the overall startups’ progress in the last 6 months was considerable.

69% think that Elab’s work to promote entrepreneurship within the The New School community is great.

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QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT WITH FELLOWS We are 1.5 / 5 years into a broader Longitudinal Study aimed to capture the results of ELab’s distributed model compared with standard Academic Incubators.

Researching the efficacy of the distributed model for academic incubators • Measure startup teams in terms of skills, access, knowledge, overall capacity (perspective

& network analysis) at the beginning then middle and end of their fellowship...then follow them 5 years out.

• Measure strength of ELab support structure and resources (network analysis) • Measure business model strength and potential for scale (predictive analysis) • Merge business models to identify potential for systemic impact (perspective analysis)

Measuring the impact Design Led Initiatives have on the Economy over the next 5 years: • Impact on the Local Economy • Impact on Job Creation • impact on our partners • Impact on the Startups

Measuring the impact of Parsons Elab within its Ecosystem: • Impact on the Startups • Impact on Parsons Entrepreneurial Education • Impact on the School Environment & Community • impact on our Alumni & Partners

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2016 & 2017 FELLOWSHIPS: COMPANY PROGRESS Out of the initial batch of fellows from the first 2014-15 cohort 2 out of 4 remain in business the others dissolved because of good job offers. We believe that the characteristics that make up an entrepreneur make very good “intra-preneurs” and therefore are very hireable in today’s rapidly changing marketplace.

Our 2016 cohort grew to 11 startups, and out of the 11, 4 are still in business and growing. Among the successes, Designity is expanding markets into a new major city, and Designing the We has played a crucial role in NYC Health’s project “Undesign the Redline.”

DESIGNITY // SHAROUZ VERSHABI, 2016 FELLOW 10,975 USERS

CONSUMER RETENTION RATE

476 COMPLETED PROJECTS 23 UNIVERSITIES 2017 BROUGHT IN $180K REVENUE https://designity.com/

DARTBOARD

95%

// GABOR TANKOVICS, 2016 FELLOW

350% YEAR OVER YEAR CUSTOMER GROWTH 20% MONTH OVER MONTH COMPANY GROWTH INCREASED CUSTOMER RETENTION BY 12% IN 2017 LAUNCHED B2B OFFER AFTER GRADUATING FROM THE ELAB

https://www.dartboard.nyc/

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LOOKING FORWARD: 2018 We are very excited to welcome the following teams into our 2018 Cohort. These fellows will be assessed and data captured starting in January of 2018, routinely through the duration of their fellowship in both monthly snapshots, benchmark and progress goals, as well as continuing qualitative research.

Crowtips is a platform that gathers market data directly from consumers, tracking their consumption patterns, preferences and interests. Crowdtips plan is to address the large market data gaps in developing countries, currently focusing on Nigeria as a test market.

MEDIA x WOMEN is a diverse, inclusive, and global community.

MxW creates a climate of possibility through the experiences of content, connections, collaborations, and events for women in the media industries. MxW promotes awareness, education, and inspiration.

Pulpmade takes boring children’s products and redesigns them into exciting tangible objects that engage creativity. Pulpmade’s first product is the Posse Stool, a functional stool made of recycled paper that also works as an open-ended canvas for children to draw, decorate, and express themselves.

Sustainable Furniture that Inspires Creativity

A digital asset transfer and payment platform.

SETLE

PMDAlliance provides opportunities for people impacted by Parkinson’s & other disorders to learn, live life fully and connect.

PMD reaches across communities and partner with physicians to provide education, care partner retreats, web talks and support group leader training.

Setle is a digital asset transfer and payment platform, which removes the friction from the process of constructing a working agreement, sending files, reviewing them, and concluding the transaction with a payment.

Unfold Stories is a digital storytelling app. The platform offers an ad-free and in-app-purchase-free experience for users interested in standing out from the crowd to create beautiful and minimal-looking stories using easy-to-use templates. Users are able select templates and add text, photos and videos and create stories within the app.

THREADCYCLE

empathecary a new path for pain management through medical cannabis

CIVIC FLEET

Threadcycle is the only startup from last years cohort that has stayed on this year. Threadcycle’s mission is to collect and recycle textile waste from garment manufacturers in order to reduce landfill use and energy waste. Using collected fabric scraps, we break down the materials using heat to create biochar that can be sold and for filtration, fertilization and stimulation of agricultural growth.

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2018 GOALS Based on data collected from last year’s various programs and the new needs of the rapidly changing innovation economy, this year we aim to pair down our offering to our most successful including the time bank mentorship, 12 mo incubator program and INNOVATE NYC. Within each, we are building upon the most successful parts of the programs initiated in 2016 to stay nimble and iterate as we go. We plan to continue our research and support the interests of our fellows and our community as they respond to the world around us.

1. BUILD ELAB’S PUBLIC NAME AND PUBLIC PRESENCE, ACROSS NEW SCHOOL COMMUNITY AND GREATER NY ECOSYSTEM Forging Partnerships and building up old ones revolving around interests of our fellows allows us to change and adapt the spaces we partner with. This year, we reached out to new sector specific incubator/co-working space, Alley, a tech community space and several new product makerspaces in Brooklyn. We will continue to build relationships with these new spaces.

2. CLARITY OF GOVERNANCE WITHIN A DISTRIBUTED MODEL Our goal is to continue iterating on our distributed model with our learnings from 2017, clarifying ELab team roles, the communication channels between ELab, Fellows, Partners and Mentors, as well as focus on documentation of methods and practice for continued ease between team and fellowship transitions.

3. DIVERSIFY AND BUILD OUT ELAB’S PROGRAM OFFERINGS There are specific type sof business models that we have been able to help, and some that we have realized we require more support for - specifically the consulting and firm model.

We plan to pilot an Independent Business program with Indie.biz, engaging with blockchain cooperativism, learning from other distributed models and potentially implementing them in our offerings.

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CONCLUSION On a macro level, 2017 had seen tremendous uncertainty, volatility and change politically, economically, socially and technologically. Due to rapid innovation, there has been exponential disruption and change in business models and the marketplace. We have realized that we can no longer comport ourselves with the business as usual mentality from the past century. The wicked, complex and systemic problems we face globally today will require brave new risky innovative responses. Supporting the next generation of changemakers has never been more important and more inspiring. When ELab presents the work of its fellows in an international context it is apparent that the real-world exposure, lean strategies and distributed resources that ELab utilizes reflect, perhaps, a distinctively american approach; the behavior change that many fellow’s are designing for has a business—rather than government or policy directive. Presenting work in certain forums has helped ELab externally validate its approach, re-frame its narrative and find new ways of describing and articulating its value.

TEAM Elab is comprised of faculty, volunteer long term alumni, experts in our extended community, partners and by student administrators and researchers who all work passionately and tirelessly with a shared vision along with it’s founder Rhea Alexander, an alumna as well, to build own community of support. A big thank-you goes out to 2017 Team.

DEDICATION The ELab community holds tremendous gratitude to our current funders the Gloria and Bohan Foundation and The School of Design Strategies at The New School, who have been the backbone support in making our partnerships flourish and the incubation programs develop. We have achieved so much this past year due to the generosity and encouragement of the foundation and its founder Gloria Bohan, which has so far enabled 21 new startups to emerge from Parsons, get incubated within the ever growing NYC community, and potentially impact our community long term in numerous positive ways.

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//YOUR SUPPORT IS INVALUABLE// THANK YOU

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