welcome to
TULIP INSTITUTE
An entrepreneurship salon where creatives build with
meaning and beauty.
Because efficiency cannot replace human-centricity.
the applied philosophy of
design-led
Most business education wasn’t built for creatives.Human-centered problems require empathy, meaning, and taste.Traditional systems leave creative, humanities-wired founders underserved—because they prioritize efficiency over meaning, metrics over intuition, and scale over human judgment.At Tulip Institute, we train the skills machines cannot replace: sense-making, cultural fluency, ethical judgment, and taste-driven decision-making.
entrepreneurial creatives
rise up & start
The world needs your imagination, empathy, and beauty more than ever.Creatives, human-centric thinkers, and design-led builders have a unique gift: the ability to see connections, sense human needs, and turn ideas into ventures that truly matter.At Tulip Institute, we cultivate POETPRENEURS—creatives who design, prototype boldly, and build companies with meaning, beauty, and human-centered impact.
THE UNDERSERVED CREATIVES
why
“The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic “right-brain” thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn’t. — Daniel PinkThe world needs more POETPRENEURS—creative, human-centered builders who can see connections, sense human needs, and address underserved challenges.Traditional business systems prioritize efficiency over meaning, scale over judgment. At Tulip Institute, we cultivate the next generation of POETPRENEURS, empowering creatives to lead ventures that matter, with empathy, taste, and intentionality.
The Tulip Institute
what we do
Acquire
Foundational workshops on design-led, applied philosophy, and human-centered entrepreneurship.
Outcome: Gain insight, judgment, and cultural fluency.Design
Ideate, prototype, and test concepts across sectors.
Outcome: Turn imagination into actionable MVPs.Ferment
Mentorship, selective incubation, and access to early adopters.
Outcome: Refine, validate, and launch high-potential ventures.Consulting
High-level guidance for leaders and founders.
Outcome: Transform ventures with strategic, human-centered guidance
why the name
tulip
Innately rebellious, the tulip is a distinctly special flower biologically and symbolically. A tulip bulb, known to bloom year after year, symbolizes perpetual innovation the fundamental philosophy that gives the institute its name.
founder
Siamak S. Zangéné
A hardware and product design veteran forged across two decades in Silicon Valley at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. MIT-trained. Designed and shipped multimillion-dollar products for multinational companies. Created value. Felt the vacuum. Top business schools couldn’t explain what I saw: why certain companies dent the universe while better-funded incumbents optimize toward irrelevance despite equal resources.Burning out at the pinnacle of “success” forced a more honest question: what if entrepreneurship itself had been misdefined—into a soulless pursuit of over-optimization, disconnected from what actually creates human-centric value?A sabbatical in Portugal became a quest to answer one thing: why do design-led companies consistently outperform the S&P by more than 200%?The answer wasn’t another strategy framework. It was how these companies are wired at their core—Human, Innovation, and Structure in the right order—while most traditional organizations construct it backwards and then wonder why execution feels like pushing rope.That became POETPRENEURS. The research. The model. The proof. I now work with leaders in hospitality and consumer products and services who have “won” by traditional measures, but quietly sense they’re still playing the wrong game.
resources
The Healicon Valley: Why Portugal Should Not Mimic Silicon Valley
The Invisible Bee from California
The business value of design
A tale of two cultures: must Britain choose between science and the arts?
More Universities Shut Down Traditional M.B.A.
The High Price of Efficiency
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