What do you get when you combine the design acumen of IDEO with the social entrepreneur advocacy of the Acumen Fund? A symbiotic relationship that benefits both the design world and the fight against poverty. IDEO, the industrial design firm led by socially-conscious design leader Tim Brown, has partnered with Acumen Fund to bring great design to those who need it. Over the last two years, the partnership has begun to explore how Acumen Fund’s focus on using entrepreneurial approaches to address the problems of poverty, coupled with IDEO’s human-centered approach to design, could create synergy and help both organizations achieve their broader goals.

Acumen Fund is a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty. We seek to prove that small amounts of philanthropic capital, combined with large doses of business acumen, can build thriving enterprises that serve vast numbers of the poor. Our investments focus on delivering affordable, critical goods and services – like health, water and housing – through innovative, market-oriented approaches.

IDEO helps organizations innovate through design. Independently ranked by global business leaders as one of the world’s most innovative companies, we use design thinking to help clients navigate the speed, complexity, and opportunity areas of today’s world.

+ IDEO
+ Acumen Fund

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 4:01 am and is filed under Non-Profits & Organizations, Tales of Great Design, Designers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.