(linkedin) www.linkedin.com/in/stevenlehmann (email) steven.lehmann@gmail.com (mobile) +1 (219) 741-3570

P R OJ E C T P O R T F O L I O

“EVERYONE DESIGNS WHO DEVISES COURSES OF ACTION AIMED AT CHANGING EXISTING SITUATIONS INTO PREFERRED ONES.”

-HERBERT SIMON

I AM A NEW VENTURE DESIGNER...

I help develop novel ideas and get them off the ground - whether in a hectic startup, a

new business unit, a corporate office, or even an urban slum. I’m particularly passion-

ate about ideas that use technology to solve big social problems, or that help people

unlock their creativity and human potential.

Behind my work is a love for people, an insatiable curiosity, and a knack for cross-polli-

nating ideas from multiple knowledge areas. My design strategy? Understand the chal-

lenge, model it conceptually, break it into pieces, and design a solution for each piece. I

use tools from three primarily toolkits:

BUSINESS STRATEGY TOOLKITI use financial and business models to design businesses around technologies or prod-

ucts with a potential to solve major social problems.

ENGINEERING TOOLITI use technical computation, thermodynamics / heat transfer, and 3-D modeling to de-

sign solutions to technical problems. I often find the engineering mindset to be just as

valuable in non-technical projects.

HUMANITARIAN TOOLKITI apply my training in the humanities and my work in international development to en-

sure that the human-benefit component of every project always remains the #1 priority.

PROJECT 1 INNOVATION MEGAPROJECTS

Seattle, WA

PROJECT 2 SLUM INNOVATION INCUBATOR

Boston, MA

PROJECT 3 URBAN FOOD START-UP

Chicago, IL

PROJECT 4-7 OTHER GLOBAL (AD)VENTURES

Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Haiti

MY TOOLBOX

...CHECK OUT SOME OF MY PROJECTS

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Challenge Our team of six worldclass technologists,

business innovators, and policy experts was

tasked with developing founder Edward

Jung’s vision of an Innovation MegaProject

(IMP) into a deployable business model.

An IMP helps governments create an

ecosystem of investors, inventors, and

businesses around an “innovation platform”

in order to solve long-term, large-scale

social problems.

Approach Our team moved from concept creation and

modelling to a sellable business model over

an intense, three-month innovation blitz.

The next three pages show a few of the

strategies I used to help us get there.

Solution Our design utilizes a mix of technology

advances and innovative policies to

accelerate the invention of green building

technologies and incentivize their adoption

on a massive scale. The rest is confidential!

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THINK VISUALLY. BUILD MODELS.

Below is one of many conceptual models I created to help the team visualize the challenge. It shows our primary stakeholders over time, their relationships with our business (the blocks), and what they care about (the equations).

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IMAGINE. STORIFY.

Putting on my engineering hat, I built another model to help us imagine all the scenarios in which our product/service could help stakeholders benefit from future-technology. After creating a “taxonomy of benefits,” I wrote ten narrative stories illustrating these benefits from each stakeholders’ perspective.

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FOLLOW THE MONEY. ALIGN INCENTIVES.

I worked with our team leader and economist to create a detailed financial model, helping us predict the timing and magnitude of financial benefits to stakeholders. Resulting insights helped us refine the technical components of the business and better align financial incentives.

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Challenge The Clinton Global Initiative challenged

50 MBA programs to compete for

$1-million to create a for-profit business

to significantly decrease food insecurity

in urban slums by 2018.

Approach We based our business model on an

unconventional but powerful assertion:

that slum-dwellers can create business

ideas and inventions with real economic

value. Our design draws from our

experience incubating ideas in developing

countries, as well as IDEO’s Human

Centered Design Toolkit.

Solution We designed a business that stimulates

“trickle-up innovation” by creating

slum-based innovation incubators and

connecting them with idea monetization

mechanisms, including corporate open-

innovation platforms and invention

investment funds.

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We scoured through stacks of research, watched 50+ hours of on-the-ground interviews,

and filled whiteboards, notebooks, and sticky-pads with ideas.

LISTEN. RESEARCH. CONCEPT.

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SHARE. PARTNER. REFINE.

After developing a minimum viable concept, we shared it with stakeholders, brought them

into our thinking process, and relentlessly refined the idea. Our final concept was designed

in partnership with the Kounkuey Design Initiative, Shack & Slum Dwellers International,

and General Mills’ Open Innovation, External Partnerships, and CSR teams.

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PLAN. PITCH. REPEAT.

Lastly, we finalized our business model, created financial projections, and set social impact

goals. We joined 20 other elite schools in pitching our idea to a selection committee

composed of CEOs, public-policy influencers, and international business experts. We

continue to iterate our design and will pitch at several competitions in Fall 2013.

Challenge I joined a group of Merchandise Mart

executives to launch Top Box Foods, a

market-based hunger relief program that

partners with local communities. With a one-

year goal of reaching $1-million in revenue, we

developed a system to coordinate our sales

effort and manage weekly communications

with 3,000+ churches.

Solution Working with sales reps on a daily basis, we

developed a user-friendly CRM that tracked

25+ key metrics. As business challenges

and sales strategies evolved, we integrated

the CRM with cloud-based platforms for

accounting and finance, web analytics,

e-commerce, email marketing, social media,

and geographic sales prospecting. Insights

from this integrated enterprise system

led to significant improvements in market

segmentation and sales strategy.

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“Steve joined the Top Box Foods team from its

very beginning, and his profound mark will be felt

throughout its existence. Fueled by his passion for

charitable work and his expertise in business and

technology, Steve drove the strategy, development

and implementation of our customer acquisition

and servicing tools and processes, working day-

to-day with the organization’s leadership and its

volunteers and interns. His work leaves Top Box

Foods positioned for long-term, efficient growth

and management of its customers and their

relationships, using leading solutions integrated

with mainstream tools. Within the team, he was

a natural leader who quickly endeared himself

and earned the highest respect for his sense

of practicality layered by a sense of adventure,

always willing to do what it takes and then some

for the project, the team and most importantly

the customer. Steve is truly a consummate

professional, a valued friend and a good person,

and I am proud to know him.”

- Christopher Kennedy

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We developed a geographic sales prospecting tool that enables sales teams and community organizers to determine key information about current and prospective partners from their smartphones. After releasing the tool, the number and quality of sales visits increased dramatically.

Previous Page: At the end of each week, an algorithm searches the CRM database and displays information about key marketing and sales metrics on a custom dashboard.

KENYA I worked with a team of engineers to design

and install a wind & solar powered irrigation

system for a rural village experiencing a

five-year drought.

TANZANIA I worked with local chiefs to design and

implement a regional bio/sand water

filtration program.

UGANDA I helped organize and lead a week-long

leadership training summit for refugees of

Joseph Kony’s Ugandan terror campaign.

HAITI I travelled to post-earthquake to Haiti to

document best practices for urban cholera

treatment programs and transitional

shelters.

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The whole village gathered to celebrate the conclusion of five successful days of training.

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This IDP camp in Jacmel is one of several sites I visited around Haiti. More than a year after the earthquake that devestated the country, NGOs were still struggling to halt the spread of cholera in camps and move residents into semi-permanent “transitional” shelters.

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The casing goes in to one of three wells which we rejuvenated, retrofited with solar panels and/or windmills, and networked with irrigated fields of sorghum and tomatoes.

ANALYTICS

BUSINESS ENGINEERING

TOOLBOX

TECHNICALCOMPUTATION

FINANCIALMODELLING

EARLY-STAGECAPITAL

DERIVATIVES

BUSINESSINTELLIGENCE

3D MODELING

PROTOTYPING

LASERSCANNING

FINITE-ELEMENTANALYSIS

INTELLECTUALPROPERTY

HUMANITARIAN

HUMAN-CENTEREDDESIGN

PUBLIC HEALTH

IMPACT INVESTING

DATA MINING& VISUALIZATION

BUSINESSMODELDESIGN

PUBLIC-PRIVATEPARTNERSHIPS

INTERNATIONALPOLICY

INNOVATIONSTRATEGY

INFORMATIONARCHITECTURE

3D

3D