Strategies

Rhea Alexander, founder of the Parsons Entrepreneurs Lab and co-director of the Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative, completed “Strategies for Starting Up in a Multiverse” in 2023 with co-authors, distilling years of testing startup methodologies through a design-inflected approach aimed at Gen Z, alphas, and creatives who think differently. The guide moves from mindset to mission to methods to multiplicity, arguing that design strategy can make deep and profound change while building in community and social-environmental justice. Driven by her own difficulties starting up as a woman, Alexander has consistently created pathways for underserved entrepreneurs—creatives, people of color, women—and her current research investigates why female founder funding dropped to 1.8% by 2025, using strategic design methodology to prototype and test systemic interventions.

Jeongki Lim, Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Management, studies how technology like AI can support the inherently human capacity for creative learning—the ability to make something new and useful. Through empirical studies positioning AI as a peer in both kindergarten settings in Finland and higher education—using robotic arms engaging in drawing activities alongside students—he investigates the relational dynamics that emerge when AI participates in creative work. His central concern is that while AI can automate creative processes for instant efficiency, this doesn’t necessarily develop students’ own creative capacities. Drawing on over a decade as an arts and design educator, his work now extends to shaping policies, guidelines, and tools that help faculty and students integrate AI meaningfully, rejecting simplistic binaries in favor of building toward a more empowering environment for creative communities.