We are talking about what is rightfully a complex issue with an enormous number of stakeholders and great social relevance. In consultation with the client, we decided to set up a program that consisted in outline:

• recruit and select 4 young professionals from diverse backgrounds who would work together over a 10-month period from a question to a solution.
• supplementing this team with two client employees who would participate part-time in the project
• set up a personal development approach to which the trainees could devote one day a week
• Provide a coaching program for employees of the Home Owners Association, so that they too would be introduced to (elements of) Entrepreneurial Design Thinking.

So unlike traditional trainee programs, here we put a team to work on a joint assignment, training and coaching them to use Entrepreneurial design Thinking to come up with good solutions together. Working in a multidisciplinary team in this way has enormous advantages over traditional traineeships, where a trainee is usually fairly solitary within the field of the training taken.