Young Talent Program
The Young Talent Program (YTP) is a talent development and community-building initiative designed during my internship at Elihome’s Milan office. It supports interns and early-career professionals through structured resources and a shared platform for continuous growth.
The program provides opportunities for learning, skill development, career exploration, and networking, while reflecting the company’s commitment to youth development and education. By building long-term connections among universities, enterprises, and partners, YTP also creates value by strengthening innovation resources and strategic collaboration networks.
Time
April-June 2025
Type
Enterprise Service Design
Team
3 Members
/ Project Background
A Growing Young Talent Community
Elihome’s diverse Milan studio brings together young talents from over seven universities and fourteen countries, many of them interns about to enter the professional world. As the team grows, the company seeks to move beyond short-term internships by creating a platform that supports young people’s long-term development through learning, skill-building, and career exploration.This initiative addresses young people’s evolving development needs while demonstrating Elihome’s long-term commitment to corporate social responsibility, talent development, and collaborative networks.
/ Demand Research
We began the study by examining the needs of both the company and young talents, and sought to align and integrate these needs in order to explore solutions that respond simultaneously to organizational development goals and young people’s growth aspirations.
Research on young talents’ needs
We designed a questionnaire consisting of 32 questions covering work experience, communication and collaboration, tools and methods, as well as expectations and needs related to the YTP project. In total, 14 valid responses were collected, providing valuable insights to inform the subsequent design and optimization of the program.
Based on the questionnaire and interview results, we identified the core needs of young talents as follows:
Real-World Projects
Networking
Financial Compensation
Mentorship
Mentorship: Young talents hope to receive professional guidance throughout the program, ideally through a structured mentorship system, with continued support for future employment and career development.
Real-World Projects: They expect to engage in more real projects to strengthen professional skills, gain practical experience, and enhance their CVs and portfolios.
Networking: They value building broad personal and professional networks to prepare for future job seeking and career development.
Financial Compensation: They hope to receive appropriate financial compensation through internships or projects, reflecting recognition of the value of their work.
Research on the company’s needs
In the process of identifying the company’s core needs, we held multiple in-depth discussions with Chen, the head of Elihome’s Milan office, and conducted meetings with the U.S. headquarters. Through this process, we clarified the underlying motivations driving the company to advance the YTP project.
Based on the results of multiple meetings, we identified the company’s core needs as follows:
Corporate Future Strategy
Stronger Partnerships
Increased CSR Branding
New Products & Services
New Products & Services: Encourage young talents to explore and develop innovative products and services with market potential, bringing new growth opportunities to the company.
Increased CSR Branding: Enhance the company’s brand image and public recognition in corporate social responsibility by focusing on youth development and educational support.
Stronger Partnerships: Strengthen and expand the company’s connections with various partners, especially local educational institutions and design firms in Milan, through the implementation of the program.
Corporate Strategy: Position YTP as part of the talent development system, laying a foundation for the company’s future talent pipeline and strategic growth.
/ Service Generation
Based on the study of both parties’ needs, we realized that some gaps exist between the company’s and young talents’ demands, which cannot be fully addressed by the existing internal system alone. Therefore, it is necessary to involve external stakeholders to fill these gaps and achieve resource and value complementarity through multi-party collaboration.
With this understanding, we designed the four core components of the YTP project: EliConnection, EliProjects, EliEvents, and EliBranding, aimed at engaging external stakeholders to build a systematic talent development and community-building framework.
EliBranding
EliConnection
EliProjects
EliEvents
Project Management
Mentor Support
Resource Collaboration
Event Planning
EliConnection: Responsible for expanding external collaboration networks by engaging and advancing partnerships with educational institutions, enterprises, and social partners.
EliProjects: Provides mentorship support to young talents, oversees and manages project progress to ensure efficient implementation and delivery of internal projects.
EliEvents: Plans and organizes diverse events leveraging expanded resources to strengthen community cohesion and talent interaction.
EliBranding: Handles marketing and promotion of the program and events to enhance the company’s corporate social responsibility image and brand influence.
EliConnection
The core goal of EliConnection is to expand networks and negotiate partnerships, creating shared value for all participants by strengthening cross-sector and cross-institution collaboration. It is dedicated not only to promoting resource flow and knowledge exchange but also to establishing systematic communication and cooperation mechanisms that help companies, educational institutions, and social partners build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships. Its main services include partner exploration meetings and an online collaboration management platform.
Partner Exploratory Meetings
Proactively initiate and organize meetings with universities, business partners, external consultants, and sponsors. Through face-to-face communication and needs alignment, identify potential collaboration opportunities and promote deep strategic partnerships.
Online Work Management Platform
Based on initial discussions, partners are gradually brought into an online collaboration platform (such as a Slack channel) to facilitate information sharing, cross-sector collaboration, and efficient project progress, thereby strengthening network cohesion and long-term cooperation effectiveness.
EliProjects
The core goal of EliProjects is to drive valuable project opportunities in a standardized, streamlined, and cost-effective way. It provides young talents with professional guidance and practical experience while delivering tangible results for the company and partners. The projects focus not only on innovative outcomes but also on efficient and organized implementation through process monitoring and time management.
Practice-Based Projects and Process Management:
Leveraging the collaborative resources expanded through EliConnection, young talents are organized into project teams and managed through a structured project lifecycle. EliProjects ensures efficient progress and the delivery of valuable outcomes by monitoring progress, controlling timelines, and overseeing quality throughout the project.
Skill Training & Mentorship
Provide personalized skill support throughout the entire project process, covering soft skills (such as teamwork, communication, and time management) and hard skills (such as design methods, tool usage, and research analysis). Through a mentorship system, help young talents quickly improve their abilities in practice.
EliEvents
EliEvents leverages expanded external resources to plan and host a variety of events aimed at enriching young talents’ knowledge, broadening their networks, and strengthening community cohesion and interaction. At the same time, these events serve as important channels for both internal and external corporate communication, providing valuable content and platforms to build the company’s brand image and enhance its sense of social responsibility.
Elitalk Youth Sharing Sessions:
Through EliConnection’s network, young talents join themed talks with industry experts. These sessions help them gain new knowledge and skills, connect directly with professionals, broaden their horizons, and strengthen the YTP community’s expertise and influence.
Elivisit Industry Visits
Leveraging EliConnection’s partnership resources, young talents are taken to visit partner studios and companies. By closely observing industry operations and experiencing real work environments, they gain firsthand industry insights, clarify their career directions, and strengthen the company’s connections with local institutions and partners.
EliBranding
EliBranding is responsible for the overall marketing and communication of the program and events, aiming to enhance the company’s corporate social responsibility image and brand influence, and to establish Elihome’s public reputation as a socially responsible enterprise.
In implementation, it strengthens cohesion and community among employees and young talents through internal communication and reporting, while expanding the company’s social impact and public reputation through external promotion and showcasing.
Internal Promotion & Reporting：
By summarizing, reporting, and showcasing projects and events, experiences and case studies are documented to keep employees and young talents informed about progress and outcomes. This not only increases internal information transparency but also strengthens team cohesion and a sense of community belonging.
External Promotion：
Build an official website to centrally showcase YTP’s mission, ongoing projects, and outstanding achievements of young talents; and maintain continuous promotion through social media platforms like Instagram. By leveraging the interactivity and wide reach of online channels, the program’s impact is expanded, social awareness is increased, and the company’s corporate social responsibility brand image is strengthened.
/ Design Summary
Service Offering Map
This diagram visually illustrates the relationships among the four core components of YTP—EliConnection, EliProjects, EliEvents, and EliBranding—as well as the sub-services each encompasses. Through this structured presentation, it clearly shows how YTP achieves complementarity and synergy across external partnership development, project implementation, community event organization, and brand communication.
The service provision map not only helps clarify the overall project framework but also provides a visual reference for subsequent implementation and management, ensuring clearer and more efficient coordination between the core components and their sub-services.
Service Blueprint
This diagram illustrates the complete journey of young talents within the YTP project, covering four stages: Recruitment → Onboarding → Project Work → Offboarding. The blueprint clearly shows the entire process from entry and learning to output, along with the support and resource coordination Elihome provides at each stage.
Design Thinking
During the exploration and development of the YTP project, we proposed the following reflections:
Value Co-Creation: Creating and sharing value together effectively motivates and ensures the sustained engagement of diverse stakeholders.
Collaborative Gap-Filling: Introducing new partners can address existing gaps in the project and improve the overall ecosystem.
Multi-Perspective Thinking: Design should go beyond a single “student perspective” and incorporate reflections from the viewpoints of businesses and organizations to better understand commercial logic and real needs.
These insights not only respond to challenges encountered in practice but also provide guidance for future optimization and expansion.
