In September this year we travelled to Copenhagen to kick off one of our most exciting engagements this year. Innofounder Graduate is the graduate startup programme of the Danish Innovation Fund – a Danish government fund which invests every year in new knowledge based initiatives that create growth and jobs.

Innofounder is a fantastic programme which provides design mentorship, financial support, technology tools, business mentorship and training facilitation to graduate and experienced startups in Denmark. Beyond this, it unlocks a huge network of potential investors and advisors to guide each business to success.

The programme is a “design driven” incubator, and we’ll be providing design mentorship in association with the Danish Design Centre and Copenhagen Institute of interaction design.

This takes the form of multiple meetings with each startup throughout the year, a kickoff bootcamp, and several masterclasses, created to meet the needs of the startups themselves.

Having already met and diagnosed the design needs of each business, we gathered in Copenhagen for a three day bootcamp using several design methods and exercises to help frame the value proposition, challenge assumptions, and examine the business model with which each startup will work.

Through several design thinking exercises we created documents which will live throughout the course of the year, and guide each company on its journey to success through research, prototyping, analysis and iteration. Of course, we also injected a little fun into proceedings…