Stand-alone or young companies in the cultural or creative economy often find themselves in the situation of having to finance projects, orders or make purchases in advance. A wide range of different finance possibilities are now available for founders.

What legal form should your business have? A large number of factors come into play when answering this question. For example, the amount of start-up capital you can contribute or the number of people you want to have joining you in the formation.

"Am I an entrepreneur?" – Answer 10 quick questions and check if you meet the corresponding requirements. It needs more than courage and an idea - it needs a whole lot of know-how and persistence to establish and grow a business.

For the three designers of team »Technology«, Stephanie Nyairo, Madita Morgenstern-Antao and Philip Kohlbecher, technology appears above all as an efficient tool for connecting people, simplifying living conditions and eliminating existing problems.

With an open discussion about challenges, their solutions and many practical examples, we want to inspire intercultural cooperation and mutual learning. Participants are invited to join in the discussion and share their own experiences.

Entrepreneurs often wonder what customer journey mapping is and why it matters. Simply put, customer journey mapping is documenting the envisioned process of a customer's experience with your product or service.

Persona design is visualizing your target market. It's important to get a realistic sense of who will use your service or product so that you can make informed decisions about what features to build, how to market your product, and where to allocate resources.

Team "Technology" chose to focus on creating a solution that would enable farmers to increase productivity and efficiency, and reduce input costs and risk. How can we use technology to make the practice of growing your own food more accessible, affordable and sustainable?

Problem Framing is one important step in the venture ideation process. While the pure ideation might originate in a Eureka-moment, speed of development is the definition of the actual problem that needs solving.

Georg-Christof Bertsch and Thomas Jäger are dealing with the Katsikas refugee camp. The project was a live-experiment on how you can help to design without the people concerned.

Team "Housing" of our pilot group is positing whether flexible housing is desirable for internally displaced persons or persons granted refugee and asylum status, in their quest and need for individual accommodation ...

We talked to Prof Dr Lilac Osanjo about some of the most vibrant subjects such as waste, renewable ressources, the use of natural ressources and how design can help to change a mindset ...

International cooperation is becoming increasingly important. But how does intercultural cooperation work? What challenges need to be mastered, what opportunities are created?

Professor Georg-Christof Bertsch has held an honorary professorship at the University of Art and Design in Offenbach since 2009. Amongst his many activities Georg-Christof Bertsch is an advisory board member of the DDC e.V. ...

The pilot group of the Design Networking Hub has been meeting digitally and jointly developing new product, business ideas or non-profit concepts in the fields of mobility, housing and digitalisation. The first non-digital...

How can design from Africa contribute to making our planet more sustainable? Ndion talked about this with Mugendi M'Rithaa (industrial designer, professor and educator from Kenya). As former president of ...

Samuel Matonda is a marketing and trade specialist, currently serving as the Chief Executive Officer at the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI). He is a seasoned MSME Business ...

In September 2021, the German participants of our pilot group and two employees of the German Design Museum Foundation travelled to Kenya to meet the Kenyan group members of the Design Networking Hub.

Van Bo Le-Mentzel creates new designs for global movements. He is well-known for his affordable "Hartz IV furniture". In 2019 he founded the Tiny Foundation, which develops social housing concepts. Van Bo presented the idea of a Circular City.

After a very successful application phase, the German Design Museum Foundation has selected ten young designers and architects from Germany and Kenya for the Design Networking Hub project ...