says the event is designed to make entrepreneurship and disruptive innovation less intimidating to the average Detroiter. It will include six brief “IDO” talks (IDO stands for Innovation, Disruption, Opportunity and are similar to TED talks), which he says will illustrate the mission in an easily digestible way. The event will also serve as the kickoff to a student-led engagement campaign, in which they’ll canvas the community, collect stories, and produce one-minute videos about how Detroiters are innovating in their own lives, whether it’s creating a new recipe or making a new discovery in particle physics.
At the launch celebration, Wayne State will introduce the prototype of its new Innovation Studio, which Tarver describes as an interdisciplinary space where the public can see and experience innovations that were created at the university or in the Detroit area, and connect with entrepreneurial resources offered by the university and elsewhere in the region.
“We’re really trying to spark people’s imaginations,” Tarver says. He feels that the university, with its student body full of people working full time, is unusually connected to the surrounding community. “Wayne State has to play a significant part in boosting the city and region,” he adds. “You’ll see a lot more of this going forward.”
In Tarver’s opinion, we’re now in the era of Entrepreneurship 3.0. “When I started my business [in the ‘70s], that was the tail end of Entrepreneurship 1.0—you created the company in your basement with no incubators or venture capital,” he recalls.
In the late ‘80s, an infrastructure around entrepreneurship began to appear, he says, and it really took off in the 2000s. “Now, because the acceleration of technology is disrupting so many fields, innovation is everywhere. We want to place Wayne State students squarely at the head of this new era.”
