Autodesk Foundation
The Autodesk Foundation is the charitable arm of Autodesk, a technology company best known for its flagship product AutoCAD.
As part of an effort to focus the foundation’s investment strategy, I worked with their executive team to develop a global theory of change towards the year 2030, and the foundation’s role in shaping this vision. The project involved stakeholder & expert interviews, qualitative research, and designing multiple workshops for the foundation team. The final output took the foundation’s existing strategy and recontextualized it within a larger, more comprehensive systems view. Particularly, around the problem of enabling sustainable economic growth while building resilience in the developing world.
Background
Every year, the Autodesk Foundation invests ~$150M in founders, startups, and technologies with the potential to solve key environmental and social challenges, particularly in the developing world. The question at the heart of the project was: how can you build an economic system that grows continuously without compromising the planet’s biolimit?