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What can the next generation of products become?
More than objects. They can create opportunity, at scale.
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Project Beyond Design explores what becomes possible when premium design and connected technology come together.
Beautiful products can deepen connection, make participation tangible and help create or strengthen ecosystems of opportunity.
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Our first product is a beautifully designed premium connected object for homes, workplaces, campuses, hospitality and retail settings.
Connected technology links its owner to a wider community of people united by something meaningful.
A donation, campaign milestone or university achievement can trigger a meaningful moment of participation, one that can be seen and felt.
A distant moment of progress becomes personal and present.
Scene 04 — Why Universities
Universities do more than educate.
They create ecosystems of opportunity.
Our product is designed to strengthen those ecosystems, supporting fundraising, deepening participation and bringing university progress into everyday life.
- A donation is made.
- A campaign reaches its target.
- A scholarship is awarded.
- Research moves forward.
- A university achievement is celebrated.
Too often, those moments disappear into an email, a report or an annual update.
What if they entered a supporter's everyday life instead?
A connected product can respond to those moments, creating a living connection between the university, its alumni, donors, sponsors, benefactors and wider community of supporters and the opportunities they are helping to create.
Universities create opportunity. Our product makes that opportunity tangible.
Scene 05 — A Bigger Vision
One product can make participation felt by one person.
Thousands of connected products could allow that same moment to be experienced across homes, workplaces, campuses, hospitality and retail settings around the world.
Different objects. Different owners. One shared moment of progress.
Connecting anyone, wherever they are, to something meaningful beyond themselves.
The technology already exists. What has been missing is the belief that products could be designed from the beginning to create connection, participation and opportunity.
That belief became Project Beyond Design.
One object can begin a relationship. Many connected objects can connect people to ecosystems of opportunity, help fund them and strengthen their reach.
They can make progress visible and felt at scale.
Scene 06 — Founder Story
What began as a three-month journey into furniture and design became two years of travel across East and Southeast Asia.
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In Manila, I met a young boy named Michael and his sister, Angelica.
What began with buying them food gradually became supporting their education.
At Mano Amiga, a school creating educational opportunity for children from under-resourced backgrounds, I heard another story.
A priest had once helped a child receive an education. Years later, that child, now a surgeon, treated the priest and quietly paid his hospital bill.
One opportunity had travelled forward through time and returned as another.
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Two worlds began to come together for me: the world of furniture, beauty and design. And the world of education, opportunity and changed lives.
Could a beautifully designed product bring those worlds together? Could it help one opportunity create another, at scale? That question became Project Beyond Design.
My own path to opportunity has not been conventional. The path that opened the door to education for Michael was unconventional too. That is precisely why this idea exists.
Scene 07 — Why Cambridge
Cambridge has spent centuries creating opportunity through education, research and innovation.
Project Beyond Design is exploring how connected products could make that opportunity more visible, tangible and widely felt.
My own connection with Cambridge began at the Social Venture Weekend at Cambridge Judge Business School. More recently, meeting Dr Orsolya Ihasz brought Cambridge back into view as Project Beyond Design became ready to be challenged and developed.
Cambridge is therefore more than a university chosen for its reputation. It is already part of the journey that brought the project here.
Its strength in fundraising, alumni engagement, research and innovation also makes it exceptionally well placed to shape the first prototype and test what this new category could become.
Together, we could explore a new fundraising and participation model and generate valuable insight into how supporters respond when university progress becomes visible in everyday life. Funds raised through the Cambridge collaboration would support Cambridge directly. Cambridge would also retain the resulting fundraising insight, allowing it to apply what is learned to future campaigns and supporter engagement. All financial, campaign and data arrangements would be agreed transparently, with Cambridge retaining ownership of its supporter relationships.
Cambridge would not be joining as a customer. It would be helping shape how this new category begins.
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We are inviting Cambridge's fundraising and innovation leaders to explore what this could become.
The immediate opportunity is to shape and test the first prototype together. This is not a request for endorsement. It is an invitation to begin the conversation.
- Contact
- Serge di Nardo
- serge@projectbeyonddesign.com
Know someone at Cambridge who should see this? Share the experience.
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Our first product will be commercially known as The ****** of Opportunity.
Inside Project Beyond Design, it has always carried another name.
Michael