Point C Training Camp

Teach your leaders innovation strategy & culture—by building a venture from scratch.

The Point C Training Camp is a hands-on, immersive experience where teams don’t just learn innovation—they experience it.

In this intensive, weeklong sprint, cross-functional teams build a venture from scratch—researching trends and data from the top-down, developing user empathy from the bottom up, building interactive prototypes that meet real user needs, testing solutions with real users, embracing constraints to craft a technical game plan, designing sustainable and defensible business models, and pitching concrete ventures with clear next steps.

Along the way, participants build shared language across silos, unlock creative confidence, and learn how to lead cultures of experimentation.

This is more than a design sprint. The Point C Training Camp:

• Combines design thinking with strategy, culture, and business fundamentals
• Teaches teams how to lead—not just ideate
• Builds ventures that are not just desirable but also feasible and viable
• Focuses on cross-functional leadership under real-world constraints

This is not just a training. It’s a cultural transition.
From business as usual to a culture of innovation.

Originally designed as the foundation for the Matter Ventures accelerator and the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program at Columbia Journalism School, The Point C Training Camp is now available to be deployed inside your company—either as a standalone experience or as the kickoff to your own internal strategy accelerator.

The Experience

This is applied learning. Your team will build something real—navigating ambiguity to build a concrete vision for their user’s future—and a strategy to make it real.

Participants are placed into cross-functional teams of 3–5 people, each tackling the same carefully framed challenge, co-designed with you. It’s not focused on your company’s core strategy—yet—but when framed correctly will unlock deep empathy between your team and your target growth customers.

This shared mission sparks divergent thinking, creative insights, and surprising solutions—while building empathy across users and teams.

Throughout the experience, participants don’t just learn how to innovate—they learn how to:

• Work across silos
• Make smart tradeoffs
• Align under ambiguity
• And pitch like entrepreneurs

Here’s how the week unfolds:

Kick-Off

Day 1 (3 hours): Shift Your Mindset

An Introduction To Venture Design
The experience kicks off with an overview of the venture design process they are about to embark on. But they soon experience that this Training Camp is less about talking and more about doing. In a pattern design exercise, participants will quickly experience the human-centered, prototype-driven creative process step-by-step. This fast-paced kickoff helps participants let go of perfection, build trust, and begin working in an experimental way.

Build a Venture From Scratch

Day 2: Understand The Problem

The next day we kick-off a three-day sprint to build a venture from scratch. Here are the key milestones they hit along the way:

• Team: Set norms to form high-performing innovation teams.
• Mission: Establish force-ranked selection criteria.
• Top-Down: Research trends & insights from experts.
• Bottom-Up: Conduct user research in the field.
• Define A User POV: Synthesize a clear, actionable problem statement.

Day 3: Explore Possibilities

• Flare: Brainstorm solutions without judgment.
• Focus: Prioritize ideas using selection criteria.
• Prototype: Rapidly build interactive experiments to test hypotheses.
• Test & Iterate: Get feedback to deepen user empathy.
• Team: Strengthen your team by giving interpersonal feedback.

Day 4: Make It Real

• Feasibility: Research critical questions and build a technical game plan.
• Viability: Build and test an instant business plan.
• Pitch: Craft and present a compelling, 3-act narrative of your venture.

Reflect

Day 5 (3 hours): Apply It In Real Life

• Reflect & Apply: Map your key takeaways and build a plan to apply what you’ve learned to your team, project, and organization.

What Participants Will Walk Away With

This isn’t just about learning. It’s about lasting impact.

By the end of Training Camp, your team will walk away with:

• Shared Language for Innovation
  A common experience builds a common vocabulary. Creatives will better understand the business side, and business leaders will gain insight into the creative process—bridging gaps and accelerating collaboration across silos.
• A CEO's Perspective
  Participants experience firsthand the many variables that must come together for a venture to succeed. They leave with a systems view, a deeper appreciation for complexity, and a renewed sense of ownership in your company’s success — no MBA required.
• Customer-Focused POV
  Teams won’t just ask What should we build? — they’ll ask Who are we building it for? Through structured field research, they’ll gain lasting empathy and a habit of grounding strategy in real user needs.
• Prototype-Driven Mindset
  Stop overthinking. Start testing. Teams build fast, iterate often, and discover how small experiments lead to big insights and faster alignment.
• Stronger Cross-Functional Relationships
  When teams build something real together, they break silos. Training Camp strengthens trust, alignment, and collaboration that extends long after the week ends.
• A Cultural Inflection Point
  This isn’t just a training — it’s a shift. Participants walk away with not just new skills, but a new standard for how they work, lead, and innovate together.

Who It’s For

This is for bold teams ready to turn innovation into a leadership practice.

The Point C Training Camp is designed for organizations that want to cultivate confident innovators, lay the foundation for strong strategy processes, build a culture that combines high standards with high psychological safety, and align teams around a shared way of working.

It’s an ideal fit for:

• Companies investing in innovation and looking for a powerful cultural reset or strategic jumpstart
• Leaders launching internal accelerators or cross-functional strategy sprints
• Teams that need stronger collaboration across product, editorial, business, and design
• Teams that are coming together for the first time, onboarding new team members, or seeking a strategic or cultural reset
• Organizations undergoing change who want to lead with clarity, creativity, and user empathy
• HR, L&D, or Strategy leaders seeking high-impact leadership development beyond theory

This experience is especially powerful when teams:

• Are ready to think differently about their work
• Want to take smart risks in a structured way
• Need to build trust and momentum quickly

No innovation experience required — just curiosity, commitment, and a willingness to learn by doing.

Investment

The Point C Training Camp is a high-leverage investment in your company’s culture, creativity, and strategic execution.

For less than the cost of sending a few executives to a multi-day offsite, you can train an entire cohort—right inside your own building—in strategy, user-centered design, and cross-functional leadership. All while building something real together.

• Investment: $25,000 for up to 16 participants
• Each additional participant: $1,250
• Typical group size: 16–60 people, depending on your space

This simple model makes it easy to bring participants from across departments into one shared experience. Whether you're inviting an intact team or a cross-functional mix, everyone participates in the same cohesive Training Camp. That shared journey builds alignment across silos, strengthens relationships, and accelerates collaboration well beyond the week.

Logistics

What You Provide

• A large room where all teams (3–5 people per team) can work together with space for group instruction (This is usually on-site at your company but could also be at a retreat center, etc.)
• One table and whiteboard (or 3M Pads) per team, plus general supplies (Post-Its, markers, etc.)
• Catering for lunch, snacks, coffee, etc.
• Recruitment of participants
• A projector and screen for class-wide instruction

Standard Schedule
The default format is a Monday–Friday onsite sprint, with all activities taking place in the same shared space:

• Kickoff: Monday afternoon or evening (3 hours)
• Core Build Days: Tuesday to Thursday, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
• Reflection & Application: Friday morning (3 hours)

Optional Format Adjustments
Need more flexibility? We can adapt:

• Compress the experience into 3 days (not recommended, but possible)
  • Run a virtual kickoff the week prior
  • Hold the reflection session remotely the following week
• Shift the start day to another day of the week
  • i.e. Friday - Sunday with a virtual kick-off and reflection sessions

While we recommend the full 5-day in-person format for maximum impact, we’ll work with you to tailor the schedule to your needs.

Start with Training Camp. Extend the Impact.
This experience works as a standalone retreat. Some clients use Training Camp as the launchpad for the Strategy Accelerator — a 20-week guided sprint where teams apply these principles to real company initiatives. In the Strategy Accelerator, teams apply these tools to real initiatives—like launching new products, targeting new customer segments, or accelerating cross-functional priorities.

Build the Culture You Wish You Had.

If you’re ready to shift your team’s mindset, build momentum, and lead with clarity under ambiguity, let’s design an experience your people will reference for years.