Jason Tennenhouse

Jason Tennenhouse Speaking Topics

• Design Thinking for Growth

  Ideation Applied to the Beginning, Middle, and End of the Startup Journey

  Jason Tennenhouse once worked as the head concept artist for the third largest toy company in the US, at times developing over 250 new concepts a day. During this time, he learned and used multiple techniques for developing a depth and breadth of ideas, and developed methods to manage so many concepts and move the right ones forward effectively.

  The years following as a freelancer taught him that these same techniques could not only be used for all sorts of product concepts, but for graphics, user-interfaces, spaces, and visual communications of all types.

  After becoming a serial entrepreneur, he learned these creative ways of thinking are just as useful when applied to a company itself in the form of strategy, and used throughout the startup journey of turning an idea into a company and providing value to customers. We will take a look at creative approaches to marketing, customer definition, product-market fit, fundraising, and exits.

  This course will specifically convey the following techniques:

  • How to teach creative-thinking even to those who don’t think they can
  • How to brainstorm more effectively for those with some experience
  • A handful of specific methods both learned and created to increase efficacy

• Play vs Flow

  Designing Spaces for Human Productivity

  Any new commercial idea, be it a product, service, concept, or company, goes through stages of growth swinging from divergent (an expansion of creative solutions) and convergent (the application of criteria to limit viable solutions). There are moments in the company life cycle to expand the set of assumptions around the problem-statement, and moments to focus down towards a solution.

  This is the juxtaposition of PLAY and FLOW. How can an innovative community better design their facility and their programming to maximize the opportunities for members to play with new ideas, provoke collisions, try things, and take risks; yet when an opportunity hits, to quickly be able to enter a flow state to capitalize on those opportunities.

  We’ll cover tips and tricks with examples of play in physical space that will be applicable to both new and existing spaces, as well as effective programming and operations. We’ll talk about flow state, what it is, why it’s good, and how to use it again through space design as well as programming and operations.

  We’ll explore how our preconceptions of productive communities may be antiquated, and how current research shows there’s a better way.

Equity vs Equitability

Building a Nonprofit Startup Accelerator for First Generation Founders

Startups often have a difficult period of inactivity in their early stages where the risk of failure is too high to be able to offer equity to attract vendors, teammates, or investors. This results in limited options for help when these growing companies need it most. Consequently, often the only resources available to such startups are non-economic, self-directed, and static, with less accessible assistance requiring heavy personal financial investment.

This course describes a better way. We have put together a program and system that provides highly-specialized resources, taught by seasoned experts, with a focus on efficacy, yet available for almost no cost and scaled to meet a first-time founder’s needs in a year-long intensive among peers.

There’s no equity or carry of any kind. From a financial perspective this may seem quizzical, but from an equitability perspective we believe this model changes lives generationally in ways that rival zero-sum models.

In this course, you’ll learn how to find partners and founders, how to come alongside them to teach them the essentials of starting or growing a business, and how to help them prepare their stories to attract customers. You’ll also learn some creative approaches for seed-funding, and how to continue to develop their companies even after they graduate.

This program is designed to be flexible and fit into an existing innovation community such as a coworking space, tech park, educational center, or community foundation.

Walk away with a roadmap to bolstering your local innovators to make a difference in their lives, and the socio-economic fabric of your communities!