Innovate St. Louis: Innovation Stories

After twenty years of working in St. Louis to support entrepreneurs, founders, venture funds and investors, I felt I had my finger on the pulse of St. Louis. That held true until I started on a book to showcase a portion of the St. Louis innovation ecosystem.

In curating the stories for the Innovate St. Louis book, I realized two things.

Too big to do alone

First, this project was too big for me to handle without local help. So I reached out to my longtime friend and colleague, Gill Wagner, to test his interest in helping. Without hesitation, he saw the opportunity to share some of the many innovation stories of our region. He approached the project with his characteristic passion and vigor. Hopefully, you got a chance to get to know him through this process.

Giving back

Second, I realized there was something incongruent about entering book publishing at this stage of my career. In other cities, this work is done as a business venture. My motivations were different. I am deeply committed to promoting positive change and development in the St. Louis ecosystem and beyond.

To that end, my portion of the proceeds of this book is being donated to four nonprofit organizations committed to innovation: St Louis Arch Grants, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, Entrepreneurs’ Organization and Concordance Academy. Each contributes to St. Louis in unique and important ways.

What the book showcases

The book we created showcases more than 100 local organizations and individuals who are leading their respective industries in creativity and innovation. Together, they represent only a small percentage of the innovators within the St. Louis entrepreneurial ecosystem. For every business that made the pages of the book, there are hundreds of others for which space simply did not allow.

We had already started curating stories for the next year’s edition.