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 anyone who is looking to build an entrepreneurship program or community from the ground up. This book is better used to transform average programs into exceptional ones by understanding the often unseen forces in the physical and digital design of universities and other communities that influence founder success.
This book is primarily 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. Anyone who looks outside of one program or one product to the larger ecosystem that impacts founder outcomes is a Community Information Designer.
This book is built for CIDs that want to create change they can see on the scale of months, not years. The suggestions are intentionally inexpensive; many only need posters, flyers, stickers, spreadsheets, or emails to get started. This is intentional to enable communities large and small to participate, and to be able to do so without needing to go through several layers of red tape.
Further in this book there is the suggestion for founders to go through the small-step structure of experimentation, where they should look for ways to build their product that conserves their time, energy, and money to get to the next feedback loop. This insight for founders is also mirrored for the Community Information Designers that work with them. The suggestions in the following chapters are inexpensive enough that hopefully you can experiment quickly without going through layers of approval for purchase orders.
The research in this book was done primarily on university campuses, so the suggestions are tailored primarily to educational institutions, however, much of the theory and some of the suggestions can be extrapolated to help cities and corporations.
The theory within this book might also be useful to urban planners more broadly, even those who work outside of entrepreneurship. The patterns of Attention Selection and Tool-Defined Edges can help planners understand how people build mental maps of their food ecosystems, and in turn design healthier routines. Likewise, the Pattern of Layered Schemas might help planners more effectively design third places for community engagement in spaces of diverse cultures.
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 apps. The idea of the world as an information ecosystem can perhaps help these managers and designers better understand their product in the larger world around it.
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 pushes them to be more effective with their energy by utilizing energy-preserving schemas, and more intentional in designing the information environments around themselves.
For readers who fit none of all these categories, the specific tactics outlined in this book might not be immediately implementable. However, a central concept of this book 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 mental map of the world to create a new narrative for yourself.
