Blending Work, Education, and Company Creation — This article is a part of the book “A Pattern Language for Successful Start-up Ecosystems”. Throughout our conversation Umar seemed not at all curious about the systems of urban planning and economics at play that made affordable housing and fresh food unavailable on campus. Neither was he curious to understand…

This article is a part of the book “A Pattern Language for Successful Start-up Ecosystems”. In cities planners, developers, and citizens often talk, sometimes heatedly, about where money should go. Some might say it should go to roads, others towards drainage systems, others towards greenways. Most people, while they often…

The Connection Between Tool Access and Start-up Scalability — This article is a part of the book “A Pattern Language for Successful Startup Ecosystems” Tools have a massive impact on our lives. John M. Culkin, notable media scolar wrote, “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us” (pg. 1, Hurme). Refrigerators, ovens, microwaves, shape the types of…

This article is a part of the book “A Pattern Language for Successful Entrepreneurial Ecosystems.” Non-technical founders face a catch-22 situation where they need help to build a product to showcase the value of their idea to investors, but no investor will invest before they see a testable product. One…

AI is already today creating a reckoning for millions of visual artists as art AI start-ups enable anyone to generate hundreds of photos from a sentence or two of text. Art AI platforms place artists, many of whom already struggle to be compensated for their work, in an even more…

I work at a start-up called Paradigm LABS where I am the current COO. Our goal at Paradigm LABS is to develop a platform that helps all entrepreneurs everywhere start and scale their start-ups. The biggest problem we are currently facing is that our three co-founders’ experience is in design…

Branch Design, Information Checkpoints, and Community Centered Wellness — There have been 56 school shootings in the U.S. this year and it is only May. We need urgent gun reform that limits ammunition to ranges and background checks at all places where guns are sold such as conventions, not simply licensed dealerships. But we also need tech platforms such…

This article is a part of the book “Information Architecture and Entrepreneurship: Building Patterns for Successful Startup Ecosystems.” While most of the formal interviews I conducted were from student entrepreneurs at the University of Michigan, I also had the opportunity to speak with a dozen students at two other universities…

The pock-marked cheeks from healed over chicken pox, cupped now in a cool caress, Sore feet from trails too long walked, raised on an ottoman before the fire. Lungs filled with soot, now filled with herbal steam, Skin burnt to breaking, now shaded from the sun. Arms that have worked…