The Program for Autistic Innovators, Systemisers and Social Entrepreneurs was piloted between 20 March and 1 May 2025.

This is what participants on the pilot program had to say about their experience undertaking the pilot program:

"This is the first business program I’ve come across that doesn’t feel like it was made for someone else. It actually speaks to how I think and what I care about. It honours complexity, it gives me permission to allow myself flexibility, and trusts the intelligence of autistic minds, which is wonderful."

"The program has been deeply affirming. I felt understood and legitimised in a way that rarely happens in traditional business and entrepreneurship spaces."

"Recognising bottom-up, detail-focused cognition as a legitimate and powerful method of innovation helped neutralise years of internalised messaging that I was doing it wrong."

"I want to create a social enterprise more now than before."

"It is a relief to see that the whole idea of building an enterprise is doable!"

"As someone recovering from burnout from years of adjusting to organisational pressures, this has hugely improved my confidence."

"This program helped me reframe my understanding of my thinking style/s from too intense, unfocused and chaotic for a business to seeing it as one of my most valuable tools."

"The emphasis on bottom-up systems helped to affirm my natural method of inquiry. It feels like a release from the need to mimic top-down strategic models, which have always felt uncomfortable because they trigger both ADHD overwhelm and PDA resistance. The course gave me a legitimate method for exploring complexity in the way my brain naturally does."

"The program introduced a method of developing ideas that mirrors how my brain already tries to operate, which is through following the golden threads I find, by working with interest-based pattern recognition and identifying the impact gaps."

"I have always found that prediction-based business models make me freeze up, because I immediately start thinking about all the variables that I don’t have the right data for! The focus on effectuation really helps by getting started on action, which switches off my overthinking. I can see how to focus on what is possible right now, instead of chasing a perfect, imaginary future scenario."

"The Affordable Loss Principle is brilliant! I often feel like I’m meant to “go big” according to neurotypical standards of success and what sounds good, but that sort of process sends me into avoidance. Realising it’s not only acceptable, but actually smart, to start with small, low-risk experiments gave me the breathing space to begin without constantly worrying about getting it wrong."

"Naming the tasks I want to outsource made it clearer what my role should be innovation, direction, and values-holding, not drowning in admin and tech. It’s helped me reimagine partnerships too, not just as practical but as aligned and values-based."

"I had been operating from an effectuation approach without having the language for it and sometimes feeling inferior for not following traditional prediction-based business planning. Learning about the control-based approach helped me see that what I was doing wasn’t a workaround, it is a legitimate entrepreneurial model. It’s helped me trust my instincts more, focus on what I can control, and build from there."

"What the program showed me is that control doesn’t have to mean being rigid, but is about designing systems around my actual capacity. I can intentionally build in things like energy management, sensory support, and flexible ways of communicating. That shift lets me work from a place of agency instead of getting overwhelmed or burnt out."

This Program provided autistic individuals with the knowledge and skills to use their innate autistic ways of thinking for the creation of social innovations, to systemise social innovations, and establish social enterprises. It was self-paced and delivered online with fortnightly group catchups over a six-week period.

The Program consisted of three units:

• Autistic Social Innovation

• Autistic Systemising

• Autistic Social Entrepreneurship