In their landmark 2012 book “The Rainforest,” entrepreneurship experts Victor W. Hwang and Greg Horowitt explained the evolution of Silicon Valley by drawing a distinction between a planted field and a rainforest. A planted field produces exactly what is expected, while a rainforest creates unanticipated interactions among species which produce outcomes that could not have been foreseen. Silicon Valley is the result of a rainforest of unscripted interactions, not a planted field. That’s why visitors looking to see what produced the area’s miraculous entrepreneurship often find nothing except corporate headquarters—which are the result of that process, not its genesis.
Drawing on this analysis, the University of New Mexico (UNM) has cultivated a hybrid institution: Lobo Rainforest. It’s a six-story building specifically designed to anchor a seven-acre innovation…
