Urban Problems are Urban Opportunities
The Urban Entrepreneurship Initiative empowers innovators and entrepreneurs to create scalable solutions that improve quality of life for urban residents.
We believe far more people can contribute to that work than traditional innovation and entrepreneurship systems are designed to engage.
Our strategy, in a nutshell: Activate Everybody.
Want to know more? Read the UEI Briefing Book for the full story—or explore the UEI platform and see the work in action.
Better Urban Life Starts With Better Solutions
Every urban problem is an opportunity to make something better.
Innovators and entrepreneurs turn those opportunities into products and services that improve people’s lives. But they don’t do it alone. They need information, inspiration, ideas, knowledge, talent, connections, experience, customers, and capital.
Nearly everyone has something to contribute. UEI helps put those contributions to work.
Turning Participation into Problem-Solving Capacity
UEI has spent more than a decade learning what urban innovators need—and building practical ways to help provide it. Our very first organization brochure states the same belief that we still hold today: Urban Problems are Urban Opportunities.
Today, the UEI Urban Innovator Platform brings together people, knowledge, opportunities and tools in shared infrastructure designed to help more people participate in—and benefit from—urban innovation.
Through the platform, people can:
- Identify or discover game-changing urban businesses
- Explore or pitch a business opportunity
- Document or discover important urban community problems and opportunities
- Share knowledge and ideas
- Learn urban entrepreneurship concepts and methods
- Connect with like-minded colleagues
There’s More to the Story
Why focus on urban innovation? Why Activate Everybody? Why shared infrastructure? And how can this model result in scalable solutions for urban communities?
We’ve spent more than a decade working on those questions.
The UEI Briefing Book tells that story.
You Don’t Have to Do Everything.
Just do Something.
Let’s Get to Work.
