Designing Ventures for Uncertain Futures
Cohort-based Course
A hands-on workshop that gives you the skills to think like a futurist and design ventures to tackle threats to our society and environment.
Designing Ventures for Uncertain Futures
Cohort-based Course
A hands-on workshop that gives you the skills to think like a futurist and design ventures to tackle threats to our society and environment.
Course overview
Transform Uncertainty into Opportunity
In 1972, meteorologist Edward Lorenz asked a profound question: "Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" This concept, now known as the Butterfly Effect, revolutionized our understanding of complex systems and uncertainty.
Forty years later, in 2015, the United Nations posed its own world-changing question: Can 17 Sustainable Development Goals transform our planet by 2030?
Welcome to Designing Ventures for Uncertain Futures – where the Butterfly Effect meets the global quest for sustainable impact. Just as Lorenz discovered that tiny changes can have monumental effects, we'll explore how a new venture can create ripples of positive change across the globe.
Why Now:
The Exponential Age: We're living through the fastest technological change in human history. What worked yesterday won't work tomorrow.
The Great Reimagining: From remote work to AI, every industry is being reshaped. The winners will be those who can imagine and build new futures.
The Impact Imperative: In a world facing climate change and social upheaval, aligning with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals isn't just good ethics – it's good business.
This workshop is your launchpad for navigating the complex web of global challenges and emerging opportunities. You'll learn to spot the butterflies that others miss – those small shifts that signal massive change – and harness them to create ventures that are both profitable and profoundly impactful.
We'll focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide you in creating ventures that address the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. By aligning your innovations with the SDGs, you'll develop solutions that not only drive financial success but also contribute to global well-being and environmental sustainability.
Transform uncertainty into your competitive edge and become the leader who not only navigates the future, but shapes it.
Who is this course for
01
Entrepreneurs who want to break free of existing mental models and develop new techniques for opportunity discovery.
02
Corporate leaders responsible for identifying and crafting new growth areas for their organizations.
03
Action-oriented individuals who are genuinely concerned about their future and feel that policy-efforts alone aren't cutting it.
What you’ll get out of this course
Unlock your creative potential by taking on the world's most pressing challenges.
The internet doesn’t need another app for cat videos. Dive into solving critical issues like healthcare, poverty, water access, climate change, and education inequality, and unlock your potential to create groundbreaking solutions.
Learn how to prioritize what to work on and what impact leaders actually care about.
Strategy is about choice, but how do you actually choose? Learn technique for how to prioritize impact-focused ventures and evaluation criteria that matters most to investors.
Learn to Design with Triple Bottom Line in Mind
Develop an understanding for how to balance people, planet, and profit. Infuse purpose into your projects by aligning with impact metrics that matter.
Walk away with a new venture concept that you can further explore on your own or within your organization.
You don't need to come to the course with a concept in mind already (though it's great if you have one), but you'll walk away with 100s of concepts to consider based on what excites you most to pursue.
Expand your innovation toolkit.
Get hands-on with discovery and ideation techniques utilized by some of the world's most innovative design firms and venture studios.
Learn how to turn uncertainty into a source of inspiration
Gain a deep understanding of the techniques used by futurists to navigate the unknown. Learn to spot and analyze key trends and shifts across social, technological, economic, environmental, and political landscapes that can make or break your venture.
Receive expert feedback and coaching on a venture you're excited to pursue.
Ready to proceed with a venture from the course? There will be an opportunity to get feedback from your peers and instructors on a prioritized opportunity.
This course includes
2 interactive live sessions
Lifetime access to course materials
5 in-depth lessons
Direct access to instructor
Projects to apply learnings
Guided feedback & reflection
Private community of peers
Course certificate upon completion
Maven Satisfaction Guarantee
This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.
Designing Ventures for Uncertain Futures
Course syllabus
Post-Course
Modules
- Venture Design Office HoursVenture Design Office Hours1 Lesson
Bonus
Modules
- The Sustainable Development Goals as a Blueprint for Impact-Led Venture CreationThe Sustainable Development Goals as a Blueprint for Impact-Led Venture Creation1 Lesson
- Mapping your Goals as a SystemMapping your Goals as a System1 Lesson
- Day 1 - Saturday: World BuildingDay 1 - Saturday: World Building1 Lesson
- Day 2 - Sunday: Venture Ideation & EvaluationDay 2 - Sunday: Venture Ideation & Evaluation1 Lesson
Generate hundreds of ideas to tackle the UN's 17 sustainable development goals.
Use the UN SDGs as a blueprint for new venture concepts.
Discover the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and the key metrics essential for making a significant impact on each one.
Operate at the intersection of innovation and impact.
Learn ideation techniques that will help you quickly generate hundreds of impact-led ideas that you can explore on your own.
Collaborate with like-minded peers.
Over the weekend you'll have opportunities to be inspired by others and enrich your own ideas.
Are you working for a Civil Society Organization (NGO, non-profit, charity)? We offer scholarships to support your learning! Check your eligibility.
What people are saying
Harriet Mukajambo
Jack Norton
Mustafa Afsaroglu
Advait Raykar
Meet your instructors
Sam Dix
For over 10+ years I've helped entrepreneurs launch ventures across healthcare, finance, and consumer. I'm the Co-Head of the Startup Studio at Cornell Tech, an Adjunct Professor at NYU where I teach a masters course in Design Strategy, the former Director of Product at the venture studio Redesign Health, and an ex-frog Design Strategist.
Steven Stavrou
I’m the co-founder of SocialTech Lab, an award-winning social venture that leverages entrepreneurship in fragile contexts to bridge divides, empower local changemakers, solve social & environmental challenges, and cultivate resilient ecosystems. I launched the first innovation center in a military buffer zone, which was awarded the UN SDG Action Award as a top 3 social enterprise globally tackling the SDGs. I was a 2022 European Obama Leader, a 2019 Y&Y Social Entrepreneurship Fellow (supported by Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus), and an alumnus of the European Health Parliament.
Learn how to use world building to inspire novel ideas
🎓 Educational Divide
Online learning technologies, originally touted as democratizing education, inadvertently widen the educational divide. Children in under-resourced communities fall further behind as they lack access to technology and the internet.
🥽 Virtual Labor Market
The proliferation of virtual and AR tech creates new opportunities for remote work. The "Metaverse" becomes a significant labor market where people can work in a virtual environment. While this expands job opportunities globally, it also leads to an erosion of labor laws.
🌊 Water Scarcity Crisis
The combined effects of climate change, population growth, and inefficient water use lead to a global water scarcity crisis. Wars and conflicts break out over water resources, diverting attention and resources from other Sustainable Development Goals.
☄️ The Rise of the Asteroid Mining Complex
A consortium of countries and companies mine an asteroid, extracting precious metals like platinum and rare earth elements. This spurs innovation in tech but causes the collapse of terrestrial mining industries, creating economic disparities.
🩸 Biomarker Boom
Regular blood tests capturing hundreds of biomarkers become routine in medical care. This "liquid health data" drives wellness insights and personalized care. Startups analyze, integrate, share, and extract meaning from this biodata to improve health outcomes.
... and many more provocations you'll learn how to develop and use over the weekend.
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Designing Ventures for Uncertain Futures
Course Schedule
An intensive weekend with bonus sessions
Pre-Course Materials
30 minutes - 1 hour
Introductory pre-recorded session covering the fundamentals of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a primer to the course.
Saturday
12:00pm - 4:00pm EST
Understanding the SDGs, ideation and world building techniques.
Sunday
12:00pm - 3:30pm EST
Impact-venture refinement, evaluation and prioritization.
Venture Design Office Hours
30 minute slots
Meet with your instructors 1:1 after the course to discuss your idea and next steps.
SDG Impact Venture Cheat Sheet
While there's an argument to be made that every UN SDG could benefit from private intervention, the reality is that a portion of them are better served through policy and government-led intervention. For all the others however, there are discreet opportunities for ambitions, impact-focused entrepeneurs to chip away at. We've collected this list of all the UN SDGs, their explicit target metrics and potential provocations tied to those goals that we believe are ripe for entrepreneurship.
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