Prelude
The story of this book begins with a failed research study. For my Masters thesis I proposed a study that combined the ideas of two papers: MIT’s Lab for Innovation Science & Policy’s working paper “An exploration of collaborative scientific production at MIT through spatial organization and institutional affiliation” and research from the Brookings Institution’s on “The Rise of Innovation Districts”. In the MIT paper, researchers found strong correlations between proximity of researchers to each other and co-published papers. In the Brookings paper, they found strong correlations between universities and companies that gave rise to “innovation districts” where entrepreneurship thrived. My plan was simple: locate the entrepreneurial hubs of the University of Michigan.
Both Brookings and MIT worked with clear datasets that could be plotted on a map. To get my data, I needed to talk to people. This is where things got complicated. A lot of people had a hard time connecting what they were doing with the physical spaces they inhabited. Many people’s patterns of activity shifted over time as they progressed further as entrepreneurs. Some people seemed to spend a lot of time around other entrepreneurs but seemed stuck with their own company’s progress. The more I listened the more I learned each person’s story was different. The more I saw proximity was one of many factors that influenced entrepreneurial success.
I jotted down these conversations as asides to my primary research. But when it came to compile the data I had, I found entrepreneurs could sometimes be found near the Business School and the Computer Science building. This result was unsurprising, but also not fair because it did not encapsulate how they got there, what interactions did they have in these places, and how these interactions changed over time. The stories were trying to tell me something else.
It was hard to listen though at the time because I was so focused on the results I wanted to be there instead of the results that were. I felt like a failure. I had gone in with the idea that I was going to get results for a research study, the kind of thing I needed if I ever wanted to get into a Ph.D. program, and I came out with a bunch of different insights and none of them were found with a strict methodology. I present these insights in the hopes that they are useful, but with the humility that what I say should not have the weight of rigorg
I failed to answer the research question I began with. Instead I uncovered a story of how physical space and information networks impact entrepreneurial success. The following is not a typical research study, but I hope can still provide value and pose potential areas for further study.
