Columbia University: Social Enterprise Conference

Category
Professional Trainings
About This Project

 

Leveraging an annual conference to empower students with problem-solving skills.

 

The Columbia Business School has a rich tradition of supporting and training leaders with a commitment to solving social and environmental issues. Upon the establishment of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise and its upcoming Social Enterprise Conference, the Columbia Business School sought a new way to offer students a relevant, interactive experience to explore real world opportunities and to build their own social ventures.

 

OUR STRATEGY

 

TYTHE stepped in to guide the strategic planning of the conference, beginning with an initial ideation workshop with over sixty interdisciplinary students to develop the strategic focus for the upcoming event. Equipped with priorities for speaker selection and target areas for skill development, TYTHE then built workshop agenda with the guided input from the planning team and provided facilitation training to twenty graduate students. The conference culminated with a 150-person half-day workshop led by TYTHE, offering students hands-on insight into the design thinking process. Students co-created business concepts using a sample case study, exploring user needs and constraints as well as competitors and new opportunities.

 

THE OUTCOME

 

A Spark for Student Social Ventures

TYTHE’s strategic design thinking workshop equipped 150+ students with the ability to creatively and collaboratively tackle problems, growing their capacity to explore social enterprise and build their own social ventures in their future careers.

 

A Student Voice in Future Conferences

The co-creative planning process provided students with skills to build the conference in future years and set the stage for the Tamer Center to support social enterprise students across the university.

 


 

Client: Columbia University’s Tamer Center for Social Enterprise 

 

Facilitators: Kristina Drury, Grace Moore, Ellie Wendell

 

Year: 2015 and 2017