This paper focuses on how the University of Michigan-Flint's Innovation Incubator supports emerging for-profit businesses and nonprofit organizations through programming, business plan development, and ongoing mentorship. The Incubator is especially interested in supporting start-ups that address key social issues in the surrounding community,…

The most pressing social problems facing humanity in the 21st century are what systems theorist Russell Ackoff referred to as "messes"--complex dynamic systems of problems that interact and reinforce each other over time. In this article, the authors argue that the lack of progress in managing messes is in part due to the predominance of…

This article will focus on the potential role for youth evaluation advisory groups within youth grant-making organizations and networks. The main elements to be discussed include the formation of the network, the training program elements, some specific examples of efforts by young people to create and strengthen evaluation within their YACs…

Michigan State University's Adolescent Project (MSUAP) was founded in the mid-1970s to create university-community collaboration through which innovative educational experiences would be offered, best practice intervention practices employed, and sound scientific methodology used to address the pressing social issue of juvenile delinquency. The…

An evaluation of four experimental programs designed to stimulate participation of agricultural and rural leaders in public affairs assessed the effectiveness of leadership training on young men and women in California, Michigan, Montana, and Pennsylvania. Varying from two to three years in length, the programs emphasized the analysis of major…

Project TACKLE (Together, Addressing the Challenge of Knowledge and Literacy for Employees) was a cooperative project, jointly developed to address employees with the inadequate basic skills necessary to operate modernized, technical equipment and maintain job security. Approximately 500 current employees of General Motors, Flint, Michigan, used…