From classrooms to startups: Rochester hosts New York’s next generation of innovators

In their influential book The Rainforest, Victor W. Hwang and Greg Horowitt contrast a “planted field” — and its predictable, monocultural outcomes — with a “rainforest,” an environment where diverse elements interact and produce unexpected, breakthrough innovations. As Victor Hwang continues to advance this “rainforest” approach through the national nonprofit Right to Start — and as Right to Start’s New York Starters Coalition, led by Western New York’s Bobbie Armstrong, carries the idea forward — the civic case for nurturing entrepreneurship becomes clearer.