As part of the NESTA Creative Enterprise Programme, this month I was in Bogotá to deliver a workshop with some fantastic participating businesses. It is a privilege to facilitate these sessions, and see dramatic developments, significant business decisions and heartening shifts in confidence amongst each entrepreneur, in every workshop cohort over just three days of expansion and exploration.

Free Tools!

My article has just been published on the NESTA website, going into deeper detail about just one of the methodologies around understanding, creating and using customer profiles. I also wrote an earlier blog with my reflections on the purpose and impact of the programme, written while delivering it in Ukraine.

The Creative Enterprise Programme builds resilient creative economies from a grass-roots level, transferring skills and tools through workshops with burgeoning creative enterprises, and at an infrastructural level by supporting relationships and policy amongst local and national government and regional development organisations.

Entrepreneurs arriving at the workshops may be at different stages – from a business that is seeking to rediscover its purpose or take advantage of a new direction, a startup established in the last year and taking its first steps, to people with an idea that they want to bring to reality. Through three days of intensive work they will advance their understanding of potential customers, how to manage and secure finances, refine their core values and messaging, and even challenge the purpose or feasibility of their business.

The vision for each participating country (of which there are currently approximately twenty) is for each site to be self-sustaining, and hopefully I’ll be back in Colombia soon to help train the trainers.

Do check out my NESTA article here, and access the free tools available online.