A Design Driven Guide for Entrepreneurs: Strategies for Starting Up in a Multiverse

A new wave of entrepreneurs is leading a global paradigm shift towards values-driven business. This book empowers you to challenge the status quo and create value through its unique and adaptive approach to venture-building by design.

Authored by a multidisciplinary team of practicing design strategists, business leaders, academics, and entrepreneurs, this hands-on guide models strategic design as a mindset for starting up: framing problems, applying methods, identifying opportunities, and creating pathways forward through futures and systems thinking. Carefully curated case studies of young impact-driven entrepreneurs along with resources, including action-based frameworks, diagrams, and templates for founders to replicate, and a reader’s checklist to enable the transformation of daily practice, will open new dimensions that amplify the global shift towards a more regenerative world and a multiverse of possibilities.

Are you ready to journey to places where ideas for products, services, and experiences transform how we live and work? Then this guide is for you: the Design-Driven Entrepreneur.

Rhea Alexander spearheads this project. She’s a designer, innovation strategist, and educator, with expertise in interdisciplinary approaches to entrepreneurship and social impact. She’s a full-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design Strategies and Founder and Director of the Parsons Entrepreneurs Lab (Parsons Elab). Prior, Rhea spent 25+ years as an award-winning designer and founder of D.I.G.S. Currently she is a board member of N.Y.C. Innovation Collective, and a co-founder of MakeOurFuture.coop. (ORCID 0000-0003-1914-9086)

Rose W. Pember is a builder by design. She is a co-founder of Manifesto and Hodge. She facilitates Cornell’s Entrepreneurship Department, an Affiliate Faculty at Parsons Elab, and teaches part-time at Parsons School of Design. (ORCID 0000-0002-0948-3868)

Dr. Joseph Press is an architect by training, committed transformer, and a Futures Architect at Institute For The Future, where he recently co-authored Office Shock: Creating Better Futures for Working and Living (2023). He co-founded the IDeaLs research group and co-authored Innovation, Design, and Leadership (IDeaLs): Transformation in the Digital Era (2021). He is a co-founder of MakeOurFuture.coop and teaches at the Politecnico di Milano, Parsons School of Design, and the Parsons Elab. (ORCID 0000-0002-8193-2592)

Kiely Sweatt is a coach and innovation consultant specializing in transition management through experiential learning. She is a Director of Experience and Enablement for Oracle North America Applications Sales, on the board for The Poetry Society of NY, and a co-founder of The Wild. She’s Adjunct Faculty at Parsons School of Design, the College of William and Mary, and an Affiliate Faculty with Parsons Elab. (ORCID 0000-0002-1728-3268)