The UF Innovate | Pathways Collaboratory for Inclusive Entrepreneurship seeks to inspire, educate, and empower founders in all phases of the innovation lifecycle throughout the state of Florida. We offer a variety of programs and experiences to support participants at various stages of their personal and professional development with a strategic focus on prioritizing inclusive opportunities for founders of color and women.
The Collaboratory leverages a portfolio of resources and training opportunities including structured programming, informal networking, mentorship, and special topic speakers, partnering, and supporting community stakeholders in the development and implementation of a clear strategy for contributing to a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable entrepreneurship ecosystem across the state. Since its inception, the Collaboratory has been grant-supported by U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) grants.
The Collaboratory endeavors to become a place of empowerment for founders of color and women, especially those in STEM, by building confidence, competence, and community. Our activities provide opportunities for learning about innovation, entrepreneurship, and leadership as well as connecting with like-minded people and mentors.
10in5: Cultivating High-Growth Tech Ventures is a program designed to identify and nurture 10 high-growth, minority-owned tech startups that achieve a collective valuation of $1 billion in five years. The program will serve 100 entrepreneurs with 3 years of proposed EDA support, creating a pipeline to identify 10 companies and entrepreneurs primed for high growth while helping 90 other tech startups access needed resources for ideation, business operations training, and mentorship/leadership training.
EWITS® is a hands-on, experiential learning program that empowers participants with foundational business and leadership skills. Participants from various disciplines work with guided mentorship as part of a team — researching and understanding an existing technology, writing a business plan, developing an investor pitch, and going through a simulated exercise of creating a company. Launched in 2012, EWITS was named one of the country's top programs impacting gender innovation by the Institute for Women's Policy Research.
The Inclusive Tech Entrepreneurship Alliance (ITEA) facilitates conversations around hot topics of interest amongst entrepreneurs. The ITEA workshop series includes speed-networking events and the ITEA workshop speaker series, ITEA Tuesdays, which has covered business and politics, crypto and tech, cannabis and tech, and Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant prep. ITEA facilitates founders in building their network and domain capacity through a diverse cast of industry mentors as they grow and shape their businesses.
The Lunch and Learn Series will target women and minority faculty and postdocs in STEM, though open to anyone, to encourage and empower them to take their discoveries through the patent process and get their ideas to the marketplace. A full-day SBIR workshop will follow to teach how to garner proof-of-concept funding to further develop their technologies into marketable products.
