Think Your Design Ideas Are Possible Business Opportunities?

An Introduction to Entrepreneurship for Designers

Many young entrepreneurs come to Parsons and then apply to the Parsons Entrepreneurs Lab because of Parson’s reputation as a top design school. They seek to learn the innovative methods of design that businesses like Invision, Unfold (an alumnus of Elab), and AirBnB is successfully using to stay ahead of their competition and create value for their customers. But this article is for those of you who are already designers and might have an idea that you want to turn into a business. You think you want to become an entrepreneur, you want to found a start-up, but you don’t know where to begin or what that even means. Keep reading.

The traditional business strategy used to take place in a stable or predictable environment by exploiting competencies and resources. However, today’s world is anything but stable and we’re running out of natural resources due to human and business exploitation. That is why strategic design has become popular because it takes these shifts and changes into account looking into the past, grounded in the present, and facing the future.

Entrepreneurs are creators of new businesses, aka start-ups, and are often called a founder. Entrepreneurs play a key role in the economy, using their ingenuity, skills, and initiative to anticipate needs and bring new goods and services to market. There is risk, intuition, and prediction involved. There are many traits attributed to entrepreneurs such as tenaciousness, persistence, and persuasiveness, but creating value in the world and bringing about something from nothing is a highly creative act, which is why designers are well-positioned to take on the challenge.

A business will need to be incorporated as well. For this, you will most likely need (want) a lawyer to advise you. There can be large tax implications and consequences down the line if you don’t consider all your options and discuss them fully with your advisors. (If you’d like us to go into more detail again leave us a note and we’ll address it in another post)

These are programs that help you launch your business depending on what stage you are in. Incubators tend to be for those of you who have an idea, but not yet a business model or company, whereas accelerators are for existing businesses that are in the early stages but want to accelerate, or kick-start, the growth of their business. For a fee or percent of your business or both, both types of programs help you figure out your business model, work out your valuation, teach you how to run your business, and pitch to investors.

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