When you think of Fresno, the first word that comes to mind probably isn’t “innovation.” Jake Soberal and Irma Olguin Jr. are part of a wave of Central Valley entrepreneurs hoping to change that. In 2013, they founded Bitwise Industries, and over the next 5 years went on to create a transformational 250,000 sq. ft. space: part school, part incubator, part auditorium, and 100% tech ecosystem. Speaking with Peter Hirshberg…
In the past four years, we’ve been inspired by how localism – the movement in cities and towns to drive civic engagement and inclusive economic development – has ignored the national climate of dysfunction and pessimism, and made real, tangible progress across America. At first, the national discourse in turn ignored localism; it was little more than a glimmer of hope on the horizon, at time when hope was hardly…
Cities present a paradox to innovators, entrepreneurs, and young people with a passion for improving urban life and public services. On the one hand, cities can seem like perfect candidates for innovation, with important problems that are far from solved, and the kind of rich data that problem-solvers love. On the other hand, cities are bureaucracies, and even the most visionary civil servants operate in an environment that doesn’t exactly…
For the last 12 months or so, we’ve been working with Swytch.io, a company that uses the blockchain to reduce carbon emissions in unique ways. Recently, Peter Hirshberg had the opportunity to share this work in a broader context, discussing how the blockchain can be used to create new mechanisms to pull through behavior change on a global scale. In this talk Maker City Chairman Peter Hirshberg looks at how…
How do you go about the tough, on the ground work of rebuilding jobs and opportunity in a hard-hit part of the country? Where will the new investment and fertile business partnerships come from? Those were the questions raised last week when a group of 14 entrepreneurs and investors from Silicon Valley flew to Youngstown, Ohio to understand more about the economy in the Mahoning Valley. This is an area…
Hint: its not about repatriating old jobs at all. As President Trump is learning, it’s as so simple as badgering Apple to repatriate manufacturing of the iPhone to the United States. Foxconn, the iPhone’s contract manufacturer suggests that there’s a bigger prize: making the U.S. central to the supply chain for advanced screen display technology, with a large plant here in the U.S. which could add 10-50K jobs. The iPhone is…
An extraordinary coda to the Obama era is the story of the White House and Burning Man. As Dale Dougherty and I were developing the Maker City project, we worked with the White House to engage over 100 U.S. cities in making the pledges necessary to turn their cities and towns in Maker Cities. As I was leaving the White House one night two years ago I thought, “100 maker…
