Create Boldly
A learning ecosystem for redemptive entrepreneurship
Design and Launch Your Big Idea
The Entrepreneur Lab is where Hildegard’s undergraduates, industry partners, and startup founder cohorts converge to learn and practice redemptive entrepreneurship. It is an incubator where participants learn principles of adaptive business, undergo formation as a leader, and apply their knowledge to the design and launch of real ventures — products, programs, and services.
Ways to join
THE REDEMPTIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP LAB
-
Full-time Hildegard undergrads earn a B.A. in Christian Liberal Arts & Entrepreneurship. They practice the entrepreneurial arts in the Lab and also study Great Works of philosophy, literature, theology, economics, and the sciences in Foundations of Thought seminars.
-
Students at other universities can join the Redemptive Entrepreneurship Lab as part-time visiting students while remaining at their home institution. Whether you’re studying business, humanities, psychology, education, or the health sciences, during “Semester at the Lab” you’ll to identify career opportunities in your field of study, and you’ll gain valuable project-based experience designing solutions to real problems.
-
CREATORS COHORTS — An introductory support experience for ideators or part-time creators.
PILOT PROGRAM — A flexible experience for part-time creators.
LAUNCH PROGRAM — An immersive experience for full-time creators.
Program Details
Each semester, students and members focus on one of eight core themes of redemptive entrepreneurship.
Undergraduate students earn: 6 credits toward the B.A. in Liberal Arts & Entrepreneurship + a Certificate in the semester’s designated theme.
Members of Creators Cohorts or the Pilot and Launch programs earn: a Certificate in the semester’s designated theme
What is Redemptive Entrepreneurship?
Redemptive Entrepreneurship is the practice of building ventures through creative restoration — using one’s talents and resources to renew culture, serve others, and bring lasting good into the world.
At Hildegard College, this means forming leaders who unite truth, goodness, and beauty with real-world innovation — creating businesses that not only succeed, but heal what is broken and help people to live lives worthy of their God-given humanity.
01 Business model design
In redemptive entrepreneurship, a Business Model is not just a formula that demonstrates the viability of a product or program. It’s a plan for stewarding capital as a resource for impact, not extraction. This course helps students translate an understanding of human flourishing into scalable and regenerative business models, in both for-profit and non-profit contexts. Students will learn how to iterate and workshop value propositions, business model canvases, and sustainability reports.
02 AI & the future of work
Technology is advancing faster than the workforce. And emerging AI instruments are already replacing traditional entry-level jobs. This course helps you get ahead of the curve not only by introducing current AI instruments but also by cultivating skills that transfer across AI platforms — including practices of sense making, iteration, computational thinking, creative process formulation, workflow organization, research direction, and data literacy.
03 culture, impact, & storytelling
Storytelling for cultural change requires creativity as well as the practical knowledge of how to generate and analyze data to understand impact. Emerging technologies can provide us with information, but it only becomes insight when we integrate this information into an organization’s identity and mission, when we give data a name within a greater narrative of meaning and value. This course is about culture creation, as articulated in messaging, pitches, impact reports, and the clarity of leaders’ personal perspectives on what the world needs.
04 strategy & systems
Successful leaders don’t make big decisions randomly or out of mere instinct. They build purposeful structures that aim at long-term impact and that empower the work of their team. This course teaches the art of adaptive strategic planning — a roadmap that connects the people, purposes, and processes of your work. You’ll learn to create strategies for products, programs, and organizations that ground your work in confidence while also allowing you to respond to unexpected challenges as they come.
05 Marketing, growth, & Influence
This course is an exploration of marketing as an integrated system requiring strategic judgment, ethical discernment, and adaptive decision-making. Building on foundational marketing literacy, students will examine how storytelling, systems, and behavior change interact in real-world contexts shaped by constraint, complexity, and competing priorities. The course emphasizes the art of synthesizing the information we have to create effective marketing plans — helping students move from using frameworks to evaluating and adapting them.
06 product & program design
Redemptive product and program design is the art of creating offerings that heal, restore, and serve human flourishing. In this course students will practice Customer Discovery, moving beyond user-centered to human- and creation-centered design. They’ll design prototypes informed by intelligent value proposition frameworks. And they will learn Story-Driven Innovation, designing ventures around narrative coherence and redemptive imagination.
07 financial intelligence
This course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of money as a powerful resource for cultural impact and redemptive work. The course demystifies where money comes from, how it flows, and how it can be strategically organized to support ventures that contribute to the common good. Students will learn to build sustainable financial models, navigate funding strategies, and design business structures that align financial success with the broader mission of serving people and society.
08 teams & org design
This course teaches students how to build collaborative, healthy, and effective teams. Students will learn to create communication systems, clarify roles, and design workflows that align with their venture's mission. They’ll practice analyzing different organizational structures and workshopping solutions. The course goes beyond traditional management principles, focusing on how to add value to team members, strengthen relationships, and create a culture that supports sustainable growth and impact.
Program Rhythms
The Hildegard undergraduate experience follows the rhythms of a startup organization, combining intensive sprints, workshops, and coaching. These meetings are designed to do more than merely impart information but to form people as leaders and creators.
Members of Creators Cohorts and the Pilot and Launch incubators participate follow the same rhythms with their cohorts.
-
At our monthly “sprints,” students are introduced to a key instrument or practice of the entrepreneurial arts. Sprints begin with Hildegard’s Creators & Coffee networking and speaker series and exclusive time with the speaker, then follow with a time of focused learning and progress on students’ individual projects and ventures.
-
Focusing on in-depth analysis of case studies, our workshops equip you with practical knowledge, tools, resources, 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.
-
Individual and group advisory coaching sessions are provided each month. 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 are scheduled at various points throughout the program. Advisors are members of our Entrepreneur Advisory Board who support Hildegard and make themselves available to meet with you as they’re available. Students are 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 features guest founders from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. They share the good, bad, and ugly from their experiences in the startup world. The meals allow space for a Q&R with the speakers.
-
Pitch nights are a hallmark of our program. Our Hildegardians pitch their early-stage products, programs, and services to members of our Entrepreneur Advisory Board who form a “Porpoise Tank”, along with family and friends.
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, 3rd-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
