Create Boldly

Discover, Design, Pilot, and Launch Your Culture Changing Venture in Hildegard’s Incubation Lab.

Design and Launch Your Big Idea

Hildegard’s Incubation Lab is an integrated part of the undergraduate program, but it’s also open as a separate and concurrent track for prospective founders who already hold a degree and want to take the practical steps of building a venture to solve a problem they are passionate about.

opportunities for

redemptive innovation

Hildegard’s community members–students, faculty, staff, and mentors–are working toward solving some of our world’s most critical challenges, and this list is growing as our community grows. You’re invited to align with one of these opportunities for redemptive innovation (ORIs), or introduce another to our community based on your unique passion, mission, and vocational calling. We’re grateful to our friends at Praxis for their foundational work in creating an exhaustive list of ORIs.

End the Cycle
of Human Trafficking

Virtuous Storytelling
in Art and Media

Beauty-Driven
Education

A.I. & Human-Driven Mental Healthcare

Business Strategy for
the Common Good

Financial Solutions for Upward Mobility Among the World’s Poor

Smart Global Agriculture and Food Supply

Renewing Human Connection in a Culture
of Individualism

What Will Yours Be?

  • "At Hildegard, I'm grateful that I can further my faith and my career at the same time."

    Kyle, 2nd-year

  • “My experience here has been transformative — books that stretch me intellectually, and a community where I can test my ideas."

    Lydia, 2nd-year

  • “I crossed the country for college and was warmly welcomed. It's been a deeply enriching experience."

    Xavier, 1st-year

Program Details

While our undergraduate students work through the four stages in the Incubation Lab in a four year progression aligned with their undergraduate curriculum, other founders commit to at least one academic year as members in our incubation lab but may enter in whatever stage their venture exists.

The following four stages map to years one through four in the program, but we also expect some Hildegardians may move more quickly through the earlier stages and sooner into Pilot and Launch.

2024-2025 Membership Price: $833/month

New members eligible to join in September and January.

discovery

Discovery is the first stage in our program and in building a venture. We believe you must know yourself to lead yourself before you can lead others. In this stage, you’ll focus on discovering your leadership identity, vocation, calling, and begin ideating what role you might play in providing solutions to a critical challenge our world faces. In this stage, you’ll find your minimum viable leadership (MVL). 

design

Design is the second stage, where you’ll begin concepting your idea into a product, program, or service. You’ll also begin testing early iterations of your idea with real customers and stakeholders to understand their needs. In this stage, you’ll find your minimum viable dream (MVD).

pilot

Pilot is the third stage of building a venture, where you’ll converge on the set of features and benefits that make your product, program, or service valuable to its intended audience. The goal of this stage is to move from your dream to establishing a minimum viable product (MVP) in the real world.

launch

Launch is the final and most intensive stage of our program. As founders, you will focus on growth platforms to build minimum viable audiences (MVA) around your minimum viable products. We believe that every revolution needs a clipboard. You have the ingredients to start a movement around your product, program or service, and now it's time to put the right amount of organization in place to facilitate its growth.

Program Rhythms

  • A community event that involves those of you who are in the incubation lab along with others in the broader Hildegard community who want to kickstart or accelerate their learning and creation in each specific module.

  • Provide you with practical knowledge and key concepts to wrestle with for your organization. These aren’t just talking heads or lectures, they’re sessions where you will put into practice what you are learning right away.

  • These are provided during the program. We use The Formation Method, a system of eight disciplines that guides you to connect with yourself and your world, collaborate to address the most critical challenges you’re facing, and take meaningful actions to create solutions that will propel your ideas and ventures forward.

  • Office hours will be scheduled at various points throughout the program. Advisors are entrepreneurs who support Hildegard and will make themselves available to meet with you as they’re available. You will be able to sign up for a 30 minute session with the advisor to ask questions or brainstorm with them. Though not required, these are highly encouraged.

  • Off-the-record, candid family-style meals with entrepreneurs and founders. Each lunch or dinner will feature guest founders from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. They’ll share the good, bad, and ugly from their experiences in the startup world. The meals will allow space for a Q&R with the speakers.

  • Pitch nights are a hallmark of our program. You and your fellow Hildegardians will present to a room full of your family members, friends, and highly connected and influential individuals. These nights are important because they help you find the resources you need to build and grow your organization.

Key Lab learnings

The Incubation Lab moves through six core modules, three in the fall semester and three in the spring semester.

Leadership/Identity

One of the biggest issues facing organizations today is poor leadership. As your organization grows and you start building your team, it’s important you discover your strengths, weaknesses, and areas where you need to grow and develop. Learning how to build your team and utilize their strengths will further contribute to your organization’s success. 

Strategy

In this module, you’ll learn how to build an adaptive strategic plan and document it in an organizational field guide, which documents the evolving iterations of your organizational identity, strategy, org design, strategic priorities, and goals. This is your playbook that will allow you to be hyper focused on what’s most important in 90 day increments. We’ll also explore strategic topics like competitive strategy and business model drivers.

Product/Program Development

Your product, service, or program will be the vehicle for how you will bring about Creation restoration. Is it something customers are actively looking for? Do they know they need it? Do you know who will buy it or fund it? It’s crucial to answer these questions, test your assumptions, and clarify your hypotheses.

Business Models

There are nine building blocks of every comprehensive business model. As a founder, you will explore and develop your organization’s business model using a popular canvassing technique that will result in a working business model.

Financial Planning

Having a comprehensive financial plan includes items such as budgets and proformas. These tools simply show how your resources will be allocated to support your strategy, and they also tell the story of how well your strategy worked or didn’t. You’ll be able to estimate, track, and understand your organization’s financial status, which in turn will help you adjust your products and strategies.

Organizational Development

As you grow your venture, it will increase in complexity, so you’ll need to become competent in managing change, leadership development, employee engagement, team facilitation, org design, and a whole host of other strengths that will keep your team healthy. We’ll guide you to implement the right changes at the right time.

create

boldly