13,000 Years Before Startups: The Dawn of Illinois Innovation
Innovation in Illinois didn’t begin with the steel plow or the skyscraper. Long before the Magnificent Mile, the I&M Canal, or the railroads that turned Chicago into a global logistics empire, there was fire. This wasn’t accidental fire. It was controlled, strategic, and sophisticated landscape engineering. Set deliberately season after season, these fires were managed…
Welcome to Illinovation: The Prairie Forge
Illinois has a branding problem. Not in the “we need a new logo” sense, but in the deeper, more frustrating way: we’re really bad at telling our own story. We talk about what’s broken. We argue about politics. We compare ourselves to everywhere else. And somehow, in the middle of all that noise, we forget…