Detroit-based nonprofit Urban Entrepreneurship Initiative (UEI), founded in 2014 to promote entrepreneurial activity aimed at improving the quality of life in urban communities, has relaunched with a unique Urban Innovator platform and member-driven model to inspire and energize a new generation of urban innovators.
The announcement was made by W. David Tarver, founder and president of UEI, a technology entrepreneur, investor and longtime lecturer at the University of Michigan’s Center for Entrepreneurship at the School of Engineering. Initial funding for the launch was provided by a $250,000 grant from the University of Michigan.
“Many now recognize the role that entrepreneurship plays in revitalizing urban communities, but there is a shortage of urban innovators who can create innovative, scalable businesses that target and respond to the needs of urban communities,” Tarver said. “That’s why UEI is moving from advocacy to action, with our online Urban Innovators platform serving as a hub where urban innovators can find critical business model information, inspiration, and connections with like-minded individuals and groups.”
Initially, UEI advocated for urban-focused entrepreneurship primarily through its annual Urban Entrepreneurship Symposiums in Flint, Detroit, and Ann Arbor, where local and national entrepreneurs and thought leaders from business, academia, community organizations, and government convened to raise awareness of the need for urban entrepreneurship, discuss best practices and solutions, and recognize achievements.
The organization provides direct advice to entrepreneurs, facilitates the development of college-level courses on urban entrepreneurship, and hosted an eight-week “Urban Launchpad” bootcamp at Space Lab Detroit in 2018. When the COVID-19 pandemic caused tremendous disruption to urban communities, Tarver decided that UEI needed to play a more active role in fostering urban innovation.
UEI’s new strategy will focus on:
— Create a member-driven business model centered around access to the City Innovators Platform, an online compendium of city-specific business profiles that helps innovators shape new businesses and projects by understanding the successes and challenges of existing urban innovation efforts around the world.
— Providing community profiles and needs assessments to target entrepreneurship where it is most needed.
— Bringing together entrepreneurial professionals from diverse backgrounds, including start-ups, established businesses, community organizations, academic institutions and governments, through our global online urban entrepreneur network.
— Create a knowledge base of courses, seminars, media and reference materials that highlight the unique knowledge, methods and skills required for effective urban innovation and entrepreneurship.
The primary beneficiaries of UEI’s work are threefold: member-entrepreneurs who maximize their impact and economic success while increasing career satisfaction; partner businesses who realize economic success and positive community impact; and urban communities that are more livable, productive, equitable, and resilient.
“The quality of urban life can be disrupted by rapidly advancing technologies, cultural conflicts, and environmental crises,” Tarver says. “Urban innovation, distinct from typical business entrepreneurship, is key to minimizing disruption and creating new wealth and opportunity for residents.”
A Flint native, Tarver earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan. In 1983, at age 30, after working on groundbreaking technologies at AT&T Bell Labs in New Jersey, he founded Telecom Analysis Systems, Inc. What began as a basement business designing, manufacturing and selling advanced test equipment products for the communications industry grew into a company with sales of more than $10 million by 1995.
Tarver sold the business to London-based Bowthorpe (Spirent) in the same year and remained with the company for the next four years, helping to identify and negotiate major acquisitions, growing the group’s turnover from approximately $10 million to more than $250 million and almost tripling the parent company’s stock market value.
Tarver left Spirent in 1999 to found the nonprofit Redbank (NJ) Educational Development Initiative to address the low academic achievement of local students. He led the organization from 2000 to 2007, after which he transferred its operations and assets to other local organizations.
During the initiative’s first four years, the percentage of Red Bank Public Schools students passing New Jersey-mandated performance assessments increased from 22 percent to more than 60 percent. Tarver eventually returned to southeast Michigan in 2007, published “Proving Ground: A Memoir” in 2012, and founded the Urban Entrepreneurship Initiative in 2014. The initiative was certified as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation in 2015.
Tarver has been a lecturer at the University of Michigan College of Engineering Entrepreneurship Center since 2012, mentoring students from a wide range of disciplines. In 2015, he created the Urban Entrepreneurship Practicum course, which introduces students to developing and strengthening businesses that improve the quality of life in urban communities. In 2016, he received the University of Michigan College of Engineering Excellence Award.
If you are interested in joining UEI or supporting its work, please contact us at info@urbanei.org or Urban A.
