Strategic Initiative Fund (SIF)

Detroit Small Business Innovation & Learning Hub

The most effective way to learn business and gain valuable job experience is to work directly with enterprises as they navigate real-world challenges. The Detroit Small Business Innovation & Learning Hub will set up Detroit small businesses with the digital tools they need to run smarter, while giving University of Michigan students real experience building and deploying technology that matters. It expands the Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project's (DNEP) student-powered service model, launches a responsible, technology-enabled small business "operating system," and establishes a highly visible, community-facing front door for university-community collaboration as DNEP transitions into the University of Michigan Center for Innovation (UMCI).

The Hub has three core elements:

• a student-powered clinic that expands DNEP's established model of providing in-person consulting by U-M students in accounting, tech, and other domains to 1,700 businesses, through services including one-on-one accounting appointments held in neighborhoods across Detroit, tech help through Community Tech Consultants, and outreach events such as the CFO Boot Camp and AI for Small Business workshops
• AI and data infrastructure through the development of Highway, an entirely new, affordable, comprehensive business software platform purpose-built for small businesses that integrates accounting and finance, customer relationship management, payment systems, and human resources and payroll developed in collaboration with Business+Tech as a university-developed and governed platform
• Establish UMCI as an estuary, where Business+Impact will create a space shaped by principles that center well-being, equity, and community impact, embodying the architecture studio model where learning happens through openness, iteration, and critique

Highway prioritizes data sovereignty, privacy, and community benefit over profit extraction, ensuring small businesses control their own data while lowering costs and increasing operational capacity at scale. Working directly with Detroit ventures helps build U-M students' accounting, legal, tech, marketing, and design skills, continuing a track record that has already engaged hundreds of students with Detroit businesses.