As a Fulbright participant pursuing a Master of Business Administration at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, my research assistantship at the University of Utah aligns directly with my goal: to gain firsthand experience in the U.S. venture ecosystem and bring back stronger, global expertise to the Middle East and North Africa. As a former founder-turned ecosystem-builder, I am driven by two simple questions:
- How can we turn innovation challenges into opportunities?
- How do we help people with promising ideas take the next right step faster, with less friction?
I work with the Doman Innovation Studio, an on-campus incubator founded and funded by a University of Utah alumnus. My flagship project last spring and summer was the “U Venture Ecosystem Map,” a practical and ambitious effort to make the university’s innovation support landscape clear and accessible for all stakeholders, from donors to founders.
Here is what that looks like in practice:
- Mapping 100+ programs across 30+ campus organizations.
- Interviewing program staff and founders to understand who the program serves and its uses.
- Collecting, cleaning, and standardizing useful data — eligibility, timing, benefits, and outcomes.
- Building a searchable database for people to quickly find “the right resource at the right time,” including a visual map of their progress.
The impact shows up on two fronts:
- For founders, it means fewer dead ends and clearer choices. Instead of guessing which office to email, they can filter by what they need — funding, mentorship, training, market access, or validation — and match it to their current phase.
- For the institution, it provides a shared view of overlaps and gaps, enabling better coordination and more intentional strategy.
In creating this map, I am proud of a design choice that connects resources to entrepreneurial phases: Exploration & Opportunity Recognition; Minimum Viable Product (MVP)/De-risking & Market Discovery; Go-to-Market; and Early Growth. This design lets founders identify their stage and see resources that fit the moment, encouraging focus and tangible progress.
While working on this project, I also joined mentoring sessions with academic founders, including researchers, postdocs, and faculty. Those conversations kept the work grounded in their entrepreneurial needs such as information on early customer discovery, regulatory pathways, and how to scope. The map is only as good as its usefulness for these real decisions.
This project was a collaborative effort with the Doman Innovation Studio team and partners across campus, including the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute, the Center for Medical Innovation, and the Technology Licensing Office. Together, we agreed on a shared structure for program information — eligibility, timing, benefits, and outcomes — and applied it consistently across units. This alignment makes it easier for founders to navigate resources and enables the university to track progress toward key milestones like MVPs, letters of intent, pilots, or early revenue.
For me, as a Fulbright MBA student from Tunisia, this work is both a live classroom and a contribution. I am learning how a large U.S. research university (an R1 university) organizes innovation, and I am also shaping a tool that people can use. The experience sharpens my ability to design systems that are data-driven and execution-oriented.
To sum it up, this assistantship is about translation: translating a complex campus venture landscape into a usable map, and translating ambition into concrete, stage-appropriate actions. I am grateful for the opportunity to create a clearer path for how ideas move from campus to the real world.
Zeineb is a 2024 Fulbright Foreign Student from Tunisia pursuing a Master of Business Administration at the University of Utah.
