The Mindset That Matters Most
This spring, I had the opportunity to judge two student competitions that reminded me why early-stage thinking is so powerful—when it’s done with care.
At the University of Michigan’s inaugural Sustainable Food Procurement Case Competition, students were asked to design solutions that would improve data collection and reporting from small-scale food suppliers. The goal: help institutions—from universities to governments—track progress on sustainability without overburdening the producers most at risk of being excluded.
The student teams didn’t default to dashboards or digital tools. They started with questions that slowed the room down:
What does accountability actually look like in a fragmented supply chain?
Who carries the weight of compliance?
Can transparency be designed with empathy—not just efficiency?
A week later, I walked the floor at the Dempsey Startup Competition, held at the Seattle Convention Center and hosted by the University of Washington Foster School of Business’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship.
It was a different energy. Forty student-led startups. Over 300 judges. Each of us given $1,000 in “Buerk Center dollars” to invest in the teams we believed in. There were no panels or pitch decks behind closed doors. Just founders, standing by their work, ready to be in conversation.
The best ones weren’t reciting memorized lines. They were listening, responding, reflecting. They asked questions out loud—sometimes even during their own pitch:
How might this evolve five years from now?
What assumptions are we making about scale, trust, or access?
What do we still not know—and are we okay holding that uncertainty?
In both rooms, I was reminded: good ideas are only part of it. It’s the framing of the problem—the willingness to ask deeper, more durable questions—that reveals who’s ready to build something that lasts.
The mindset that asks first, Is this a problem worth solving?, is the one I want to see more often in the rooms I sit in.
Congratulations to the winning teams—your clarity, care, and courage stood out. And heartfelt thanks to the organizers at the University of Michigan and the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Washington for creating the kind of spaces where thoughtful builders can thrive.
Sustainable Food Procurement Conference | Case Competition Winners and Judges
