Stories from the Field: Using the Canvas to Start New Enterprises

Flourishing Business Community
Speakers Series: Stories from the Field #03

Using the Canvas to Start New Enterprises with Ondine Hogeboom

Date: Tuesday June 13

Time: 15h00 UTC – 08h00 PST, 11h00 EDT, 16h00 BST, 17h00 CET, 01h00 JST (+1 day)

Duration: 1 hour

Registration: Required via Eventbrite at

For our third new monthly flourishing business community speaker series: stories from the field, the community is delighted to welcome Ondine Hogeboom from Flourishing Startups.

Flourishing Startup’s vision is to enable the possibility for people, all life, to flourish. Flourishing Startups was founded in 2015 by Ondine Hogeboom and Antony Upward with the mission of enabling the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders. Flourishing Startups seeks to equip innovators, entrepreneurs and change-makers with the competencies that that will enable them to realize enterprises that enable flourishing in their communities. These are enterprises that are socially beneficial, environmentally regenerative and economically viable.

Flourishing Startups works with a diverse community-based organizations, academic institutions, youth organizations and entrepreneurship enablers (incubators, accelerators etc.) in Canada, Europe and Southern Africa. Flourishing Startups focus is business model design, the early stages of startups, and women’s entrepreneurship.

Flourishing Startups takes a strongly science-backed, evidence-based and human-centered approach. Our programming integrates a new generation of methods and tools, such as the Flourishing Business Canvas, while developing competencies that enable leaders to build impact-driven and resilient initiatives, enterprises and projects. Our approach is based on ten years of research and testing and is the subject of multiple peer-review publications

Ondine Hogeboom (she/her) is a settler in Canada and resides on the unneeded lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation in Tiohtià:ke (named by settlers as Montréal, Québec, Canada). Prior to starting Flourishing Startups, Ondine started seven successful social enterprises in Southern Africa. Ondine has co-developed the Flourishing Startup Method, a ground breaking framework supporting flourishing startup design and runs a global train-the-trainer and community of practice focused on applying the methodology. Ondine has coached over 300 entrepreneurs and had over and had over 8000 startups in 14 countries attend programs she has designed. She has worked with the European Union’s Climate-KIC as a lead expert in Flourishing business model design, is a fellow at the Georgian College Research & Innovation and Entrepreneurship (RIE) Centre, and works with universities, colleges and startup-support institutions all over the globe. Ondine is the author of Lean Startup for Social Enterprise, holds an MBA and is a certified coach and Mindfulness facilitator.

In her talk Ondine will focus on her experiences using the Flourishing Business Canvas as a crucial tool that helps startups and entrepreneurs start new enterprises with any possible purpose, up to and including realizing flourishing in their community’s. She will discuss:

• What types of entrepreneurs seem to be drawn to the Flourishing Business Canvas and why?
• Can the Canvas can only be used by advanced startups?
• How do entrepreneurs feel when the Canvas is used in a startup program? 
• How do entrepreneurs tend to use the Canvas and why?
• Where do entrepreneurs get the most stuck when using the Canvas?
• What do entrepreneurs gain when using the Canvas?
• How can you support startups using the Canvas?
• What does Flourishing Startups hope to gain from participating in the Flourishing Business Community?
• What can Flourishing Startups offer to the community?

At the end of her talk Ondine will take questions from members of the community.

After the event a video of the talk plus any slides will be shared in the “Speaker Series” space of the Flourishing Business Community. Please join other flourishing business leaders and become a full member to access.