Building the Innovation Forest

How do you build a place where technologists, artists, researchers, entrepreneurs, and curious newcomers can each find something useful, and make the environment richer for the next person?

In this episode of 71 North Our Way, we revisit Spring 2025 and explore how approachable entry points, shared learning, community problem solving, research, and student-led experimentation helped 71 North grow into an increasingly connected innovation ecosystem.

From VR orientation and Pizza Hacks to Mindful Moments, pitch competitions, and Project Ascension, the semester reveals what happens when a studio is designed less like an exclusive laboratory and more like a forest: diverse, open, interconnected, and strengthened by everyone who enters.

An innovation ecosystem does not grow from one brilliant idea. It grows by creating the conditions for many people and possibilities to take root.