Who This Book is For
This article is a part of the book “How to Build University Start-up Ecosystems: Five Information Patterns for Success.”
This book is not for people who want to build an incubator or accelerator at a university from scratch. There already exists many step-by-step books that can help in this area. This book is designed to help transform average entrepreneurship programs into exceptional ones by helping the people who build these programs understand the often unseen forces that influence founder success and provide them the tools to make their programs more effective.
This book is written for people we will call Community Information Designers (CIDs). A CID is anyone who intentionally alters the structure and flows of information within their communities. Most CIDs today have other titles. They might be “Business Director,” “Director of Innovation,” “Program Manager,” “Head of Community Development” or a dozen other different names. But anyone who looks outside of their one program or product to the larger information ecosystem of which they are a part can be a Community Information Designer.
This book is written specifically for CIDs involved in entrepreneurship efforts in their communities who want to make change on the scale of months, not years. The tactical suggestions for how to develop effective information structures are intentionally inexpensive; many only need posters, flyers, stickers, spreadsheets, or emails to get started. This is intentional to make the suggestions useful to both large and small communities and easy enough for one person to start experimenting with, without the need for months long waits for budget approvals.
The research in this book was done primarily at the University of Michigan campus, and is tailored to help entrepreneurship at primarily educational institutions. However, much of the theory and some of the practical suggestions can be extrapolated to improve entrepreneurship infrastructure for cities or corporations.
The theory of information patterns within this book might also be useful to urban planners or designers more broadly who work on topics outside of entrepreneurship. The information patterns of Attention Selection and Potential Achievable Action Maps can help planners understand how people build mental maps of their food ecosystems to integrate healthier routines into the design of urban environments. The pattern of Layered Schemas might help urban designers create more vibrant third places by embedding multifaceted use cases into their designs.
This book might also prove useful to Information Architects, User Experience Designers, and Product Managers that typically work on the design of individual websites or mobile apps. The idea of structural clutter can help designers push for more streamlined flows through the products they work on, while the idea of information ecosystems can help designers build products that work within the larger systems of needs and goals users have outside of the companies where they work.
Individual entrepreneurs can also benefit from this book. Founders are often inundated with low-quality information that teaches them to always “be on the grind.” This book instead pushes for founders to be efficient with their efforts by teaching them about energy-preserving schemas to build their companies and how they can intentionally design effective information environments around themselves.
For those who fit none of these categories, the tactical suggestions outlined in this book might not be immediately implementable. However, a central concept within the following pages is that your life, from the relationships you have with the people around you, the food you like, the television you watch, the political party you support, the car you drive and the career you have, are all impacted by information networks. Once you see these networks around you, you can begin to consciously redesign your interactions with the world to create a new narrative for yourself.