We believe in design-driven start-ups, the ones that put people at the center of their mission, will change the world. Design DNA, when built into the core of an organization, creates significant value beyond aesthetics and usability. It ensures that new offerings are built on real market insight and provides an approach to maximize resources by rapidly generating, evaluating, and iterating an offer—all while keeping the people who will interact with your offering the most front and center.
We’re looking to partner with great people to help build solutions to some of our toughest challenges through an intensive three-month program at our West Loop Studio from September 1 to December 1, 2012. In exchange for a small amount of equity, we invest by committing to you, inviting you into our community, connecting you with our network of clients and thought leaders, and collaborating side by side with you to build a transformational organization and launch a new concept into the world.
Inspiring people who want to challenge the status quo and create meaningful impact in the world.
You’re an inspiring, seed-stage startup with a full-time, multi-disciplinary team (equal parts design, business, and tech). You have a rough, looks-like, acts-like prototype of your idea or have achieved meaningful milestones. We’re more interested in early stage concepts and potential for impact than detailed business plans.
Focused time to create something amazing and be a part of IDEO.
You will be hosted in our space as a member of our community for three months to focus on creating. It means time to develop your offer with the help of a team of world-class designers in a highly collaborative, experimental, and hands-on studio environment. You’ll learn how to better understand and connect with your customers, how to prototype, accelerate development and derisk your business.
Best of all, you’ll learn how design thinking can define your offer and create a foundation for a successful future business. But don’t take our word for it. Here’s what Justin Massa, CEO of Food Genius and graduate of our first Startup-in-Residence program, has to say about the experience:
“When we first met IDEO, we expected them to solve our design issues. What we learned during our residency, however, was how to use human-centered design thinking to become a customer-centered company and sustainably solve our business problems. The experience was life changing.”
Sound cool? Submissions are due July 15.
The submission deadline has passed. Check back here for future opportunities and news on who we selected!
What to submit:
Describe your offer.
What problem are you solving and how are you solving it? Why are you doing this? What impact do you want to have?
Tell us about your team.
Who are the core members of your team? Describe each person in 140 characters or less. Have any mentors? If so, we'd love to know about them, too.
Show us your stuff.
Send along a short video, prototype, demo, or scenarios—anything that makes your startup offer tangible. We’re designers. We like visuals.
Interested? Great! We can’t wait to meet you.
*More About Make Days:
Make Days are sheer energy, passion, and creativity, all focused on connecting people around a problem and taking action. The focus is on building, hacking, experimenting, and creating a way forward. Creative innovation leaders across multiple sectors, IDEO designers, and you (the entrepreneurs) will work together in pursuing big change. Activity will be organized around IDEO-generated briefs, created from a happy overlap of the new venture solutions and specific, tailored, challenge areas. We will work as teams to build prototypes, experiments, and real-world demonstrations of the power of these future concepts. You'll see what it's like to work with us and we'll see what it's like to work with you. The result will be a series of inspiring concepts for new solutions that leverage your unique potential in completely new ways, something that uniquely shows off your stuff.