Lessons from 'Pitching Your Design Vision'

Next week, Healthy Ageing by Design and Centre for Ageing Better, will launch a report describing the lessons learnt from the Healthy Ageing by Design Growth programme.

Our 'Pitching your design vision' workshop, chaired by Healthy Ageing by Design’s John Mathers co-founder of Design Age Accelerator and Chair British Design Fund, assembled a stellar line up of healthy ageing investment experts including:

1. Jim Newberry, Director of Product Innovation at Codebase
2. Mike Stephens, CEO of Entrepreneurial Spark
3. Jen Estherby, Health Tech Lead and VP at Barclays Eagle Labs
4. Damon Bonser, CEO at British Design Fund
5. Helen Crampin, Innovation and Technology Lead, Healthy Ageing at Innovate UK
6. Alex Buchan, Investment Manager at NorthStar Ventures
7. Simon May, Director at Impeller
8. Jim Fullalove, Director at Therefore

Here’s a taste of the insights the entrepreneurs heard first hand in the workshops, courtesy of Mike Stephens, CEO of Entrepreneurial Spark:

1. Be SUPER focussed. If you can only talk in general terms about the problem you are solving or what makes your solution different from everyone else, then you may be hiding from a reality that you need to face. If you can’t get detailed and specific then it may be that you’re not clear on that area yourself. Don’t try and bluster your way through – look directly at the thing you’re struggling to articulate and tackle it head-on.

2. Have a plan that reaches past the first few steps.?Sometimes when you’re busy it’s easier to just start and worry about what will happen at the finish line when you get there. But what happens if you’ve picked the wrong finish line, or if you need something for the next race that you should have thought about half-way through this one? Having a clear plan of what happens next if your current experiment is successful means you know what you’re working towards at all times and can keep the momentum going.

3. Get excited about risk.?This is another thing that it’s easy to think generally about and much harder to get specific. Sometimes this is driven by fear of failure: if you don’t think too much about the risks it makes it less scary, right? But the best risks for entrepreneurs are calculated risks, and you can’t take these unless you are forensic about what could go wrong and how to mitigate it.

4. Be bold.?If you set your vision based on what you think is achievable, you might not be ambitious enough. What if you took that vision and doubled it? Instead of going “that would be impossible”, think “what would it take to make that happen?”

5. Work with people who believe what you believe and that energise you.?We had a couple of great partners on board for this project who, rather than disappear when the money wasn’t there, came to the table and said “OK, how do we make this happen another way?” If you can find people that share your purpose as a business then it becomes about more than money.

The webinar is taking place on Tuesday 2 November, from 2pm-3.30pm. You can find out more by clicking here: “Using design to innovate more effectively in the healthy ageing sector - Lessons from experts, investors and entrepreneurs”

Since our first event, a group of start-up and scale up businesses working in the healthy ageing sector have completed the Healthy Ageing by Design growth programme. They have learned lessons in the perception, use and value of design, had the opportunity to pitch their design vision and receive feedback from sector leaders and investors.

80% of participants told us that the programme had somewhat or greatly increased their perceptions of the importance of design, and 100% agreed that the programme helped them develop or progress their project.

Find out more: [email protected]