With a new mandate from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment to boost New York as a cultural capital worldwide, the NYC Department of Small Business Services sought to develop a program to help small businesses of media and entertainment grow and thrive in a rapidly changing marketplace.
With a mandate from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment to boost New York City’s role as a cultural capital worldwide, our team at the NYC Department of Small Business Services embarked upon designing an initiative to help small businesses in media and entertainment grow and thrive in a rapidly changing marketplace.
Starting in July 2016, I led and collaborated with a research and strategy team, 3x3 Design and Cantora, to identify high growth industries facing systemic vulnerabilities globally and in New York City specifically, speaking with over 200 small media and entertainment (“M&E”) businesses, through contextual inquiry interviews, co-design workshops, and needs-assessment surveys.
The goal was to understand overarching challenges of operating a small creative business in NYC, understand barriers to growth, and identify programmatic opportunities. After conducting rigorous quantitative and primary research with project stakeholders, small businesses, and industry leaders, our team designed a pilot program specifically tailored to M&E subsector needs across Marketing and Advertising, Media Tech, and Live Events.
This video captures the experience of small NYC-based media and entertainment businesses in AMP NYC, the first municipal accelerator of its kind for operating businesses, built from a service design approach by my team.
The resulting three-month accelerator pilot program, AMP NYC, launched in Summer 2018 at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP in Dumbo, Brooklyn. With our facilitators and curriculum designers at Hyper Island, we trained 22 business owners in brand positioning, growth and change management, and marketing and sales. Industry leaders served as mentors, and self-guided, peer-driven learning allowed for cross-collaboration amongst the cohort. The pilot was designed to test for successful elements to inform a full-scale roll out, planned for April 2019, and a long-term scaling strategy to serve more businesses across NYC.