NYC

2025 Dates
July 14-25, 2025

Tuition
$3500+

Learn the applied entrepreneurship process designed by venture studio Co-Created and apply it to a real-world challenge that a company is currently grappling with. For Summer 2025, our innovation challenge will be sponsored by Columbia Business School’s Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change.

Exciting news! We’re partnering with The Roger Lehecka Double Discovery Center at Columbia University to make our applied entrepreneurship program available to first-generation students from low-income neighborhoods in Harlem and Washington Heights.

1. Discovery

The first step in Applied Entrepreneurship is to understand your user and their problem. Using the Design Thinking process, dig deep into the psychology of the users’ unmet need, job to be done, or desired outcome. Apply your insights and creativity to craft a solution, and then communicate your idea effectively.

2. Opportunity Identification

One of the most important decisions you make as an entrepreneur is who you choose to work with! Once teams are chosen, work with your team, a mentor, a designer and an Executive Advisor to design your business and build out a compelling pitch deck that addresses your user’s problem. Pitch to executives.

3. Pitch

Pitch your business idea to the very executives working on the challenges you’re addressing.

The Learnings.

 
  • Before you set out to complete any task, ensure you’re solving the right problem. Next, consider how you’re framing the problem (Thomas Wedell-Wedellsbourg). Welcome to management-level thinking.

  • Whether you like it or not, to sell is human… so start practicing now while the stakes are low. You’ll have to pitch your business idea, pitch yourself as a worthy team member, and then pitch your business to the executives.

  • The beginning of every business opportunity is identifying the unmet need in the market, whether it is a problem not currently solved or the potential for a change in consumption.

  • Put simply, this is how you plan for your business to make money. If you want to go deeper, a business model is “a set of assumptions or hypotheses” (Alex Osterwalder) around the key resources and activities of your value chain in addition to your value proposition, customer relationships, channels, customer segments, cost structures, and revenue streams. When you’ve mastered all that, you win an MBA nerd badge.

  • Learn the art of conceptualization, design, development and marketing, and then go back to the drawing board and do it all over again and again. Warning: This is not for the faint of heart.

  • Once you’ve settled on your awesome business idea, how will you test it? Get customer feedback and determine whether your design will work or need adjustments before you spend valuable budget launching to a wider market.

  • When you’re an Achievement Robot, team projects are the absolute worst because your grades will not suffer from slackers!!! The dirty disconnect between school and work is that you have to actually work well with other people to achieve anything worthwhile. The happiest most successful people understand what they’re good at and where their shortcomings lie, and they form teams with people who have complementary strengths.

  • Once you’ve been through one session of Hudson Lab Ventures, you can apply to become an HLV Student Lead, where you practice your leadership skills as an innovator.

The Schedule.

July 14-25, 2025
Monday to Friday
9:30am to 4:30pm

 

The Daily.

9:30 am Start
10:30 am Mid-Morning Break
12:00 pm One-Hour Lunch
4:30 PM End of Work Day
5:30 pm Meetup for NYC Outings

Live on

Campus

Students aged 14 years or older are eligible to live in Columbia’s residence halls on its Morningside Campus. Bask in the warm summer sun with friends on the famous steps of Low library, work out at Dodge gym, roam the Butler Stacks, or grab a bite in the dining hall or at a NYC restaurant just a stone’s throw away. Our live-in Resident Advisors will be on hand to ensure students’ well-being for a fabulous and safe summer experience!

Dates

Check-in: Sun, July 13 at 11 am
Check-out: Sat, July 26 at 11 am

  • Every bedroom is provided with a bed, desk, chair, chest of drawers, closet, and a window air conditioning unit. Rooms are illuminated by fluorescent light. A loaner package of linen can be provided to each residential student at the start of their stay for $21 per week. Included are two Twin XL sheets, a blanket, pillow, pillowcase, and towel.

  • Shared lounges and bathrooms, free washers and dryers in the basement, wireless internet, and regularly scheduled cleaning for shared spaces.

  • Columbia University Public Safety personnel are stationed at the entrances to the residence halls 24 hours a day. No individual without a University identification card or special clearance is allowed to enter a residence hall building. Parents/guardians are allowed into the residence halls only to help students move during check-in and check-out. Non-residential students are not allowed into the dorms.

  • Resident Advisors ensure the safety and well-being of residential students. Students are permitted to go off-campus for dining, shopping, and exercise after class and before curfew. We strongly recommend that every student who wants to go off-campus does so with a buddy.

  • Campus dining plans are available, but most students prefer to eat out with friends choosing among the array of restaurants and cafes available right outside the Columbia gates. Columbia’s Ferris Booth Dining Hall always has vegan, vegetarian, kosher and gluten-free options on offer and accepts credit cards for its all-you-care-to-eat breakfast, lunch and dinner 7 days a week.

  • Gym Membership to Dodge Fitness is available for $89 for 3 weeks (based on summer 2023 pricing).

NEW YORK CITY

NEW YORK CITY

One of the best parts of living in a new city is having the time to explore and discover the subtle quirks that make you fall in love with it… from the energy on the streets to the architecture and food and fashion to the way locals complain about tourists taking up whole sidewalks.

Our program of after-work hours group outings will mix iconic NYC experiences like a Broadway show or the Empire State Building to casual neighborhood explorations. At the end of three weeks, you’ll be so familiar with the City, people on the street might just ask you for directions.