Fuel Innovation for Our Competitiveness

As a top-tier public research university, we are one of the most productive, among the top 120 of the 4,000 higher education institutions in the United States. Wayne State supports the discovery of new and unexpected advancements by our faculty and students and the targeted development of solutions to current human challenges. Many of these challenges are endemic to urban populations, from improving health outcomes to clean air and water; to developing new methods of modern mobility; to deeper understanding of ourselves as social beings through the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

TechTown Detroit — Wayne State’s research and technology park for small-business incubation and acceleration — is a hub of entrepreneurship that has supported more than 6,000 businesses across Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park since its opening in 2004, and has resulted in more than 2,200 jobs and raised more than $400 million in startup and growth capital. It will continue to play a crucial role in supporting tomorrow’s businesses and tech leaders, and powering Detroit’s economic future.

Our state aims to be among the top in economic growth, where support of entrepreneurship and innovation are critical to meeting this goal. Our state needs Wayne State’s expertise to translate research insights and innovations into new technologies, medicines, programs and practices that change our future. We need to include and support all of those with the talent and drive throughout the innovation ecosystem, regardless of their background, and nurture their ideas into going concerns, build on Detroit’s and Michigan’s legacy of remarkable doers and makers, and fuel our 21st century future.

To work toward this goal, Wayne State can engage more intentionally with our colleagues in business, nonprofit, health care and government sectors to foster, support and connect our innovative faculty and students to opportunity. We can be a seamless campus community that is “open for business,” where our students and faculty are fully supported from beginning to end to bring their ideas to reality and university and community artists, entrepreneurs, and social innovators mix, collaborate and change the world.