The Design and Entrepreneurship Network meets at 5:30 on Mondays for 13 weeks each semester. These meetings are 2 hour open sessions for anyone interested in design, creativity, teamwork or business-building to learn about our weekly topic and hear from an expert. The format of each meeting is loosely as follows:

• Learn: The first 30 minutes of each meeting we take part in a short (~5 min) activity designed to get everyone moving about the room, meet new people, and serve as a tangential introduction to the topic of the night. After this we hear from our DEN Expert: a proven entrepreneur, CEO or leader in their field. We like to think of this as an informal lesson where students are encouraged to ask questions and pose hypotheticals to our guest speaker.
• Build: The next hour is a time for teams to develop their projects, ventures and services. We suggest keeping the development in line with the nightly topic as a way to promote cross group discussion on common problems, and allow for groups to question the speaker about their project. This is the time where ideas are pitched rapid fire, sticky notes fill the walls, and prototypes go through iteration.
• Share: The final 30 minutes are a chance for teams to give updates on their progress and get feedback on the direction they’re taking. We like to have 1-2 teams give a short pitch and answer a couple audience questions about their venture. Feedback and testing ideas are two of the key components of DEN, and we love using them to refine our ideas!

That’s a quick overview of our meetings, but we encourage you to come check us out any week in Watt 208, Mondays at 5:30! If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or contact the DEN at theden@clemson.edu.