The city of Jacksonville, Florida has been an incredible laboratory for my Innovator’s Journey. As I reflect today, I believe Human-AI Innovation is the Last Mile of Entrepreneur Support. This is not to say that we can no longer advance or improve entrepreneur support. However, as we enter the Cognitive Age, the Last Mile of entrepreneur support can be both iterative and regenerative; posing new constructs for exploration. I am concluding my Innovator’s Journey below with the HAI Innovation Manifesto:
Carlton L. Robinson, DBA’s (@DocCLR) Innovator’s Journey (2005-2025):
2005: Jacksonville (FL) entrepreneur and ecosystem contributor
2010: Developed the framework for what later became the JAX Bridges Entrepreneurial Education Program
2011: Co-organizer of Jacksonville’s first StartUp Weekend
2013: Creator, Jacksonville’s Crowdfunding Festival (Inovet.it Canvas validation)
2014: Launched the JAX Bridges Entrepreneurial Education program
2017: Mentor for Lean Startup Week (San Francisco)
2018: The Innovator’s Journey (InJ) Credo by Carlton L. Robinson: Each innovator has a Call to Innovate that warrants an individually defined (InJ) Start to their journey. They Descend by searching for answers to innovation challenges. They begin to Ascend by gathering assets, testing, and/or collaborating to overcome those challenges. Ultimately, they move towards Unifying all that they have learned and experienced to manage a new state of entrepreneurial thinking. And they Return from the iteration as a hero. These activities are additive versus standalone.
2021: Speaker, Florida’s First Bitcoin and Blockchain Summit (Pivot.City Blockchain)
2021: SAM International Business Conference, Best Paper Award: Entrepreneurship
2024: Appalachian Research in Business Symposium 2024, Presenter and Keynote
2025: HAI Innovation Manifesto: Four Steps to Coevolutionary Entrepreneurship by @DocCLR. Innovator’s begin with a discovery that crystalizes into a plan (Business Plan, Business Strategy, or Business Model). The plan has many assumptions. Those assumptions are often experienced the hard way through some form of Vet-Value-Organize-Pivot. The Lean Startup revolutioned a formal way to validate entrepreneurial learning with rapid experimentation via Build-Measure-Learn Loops. It is a powerful sequential loop but had been limited by human iteration and cycle time. Today’s Cognitive Age and Human-AI (HAI) ecosystems enable co-learning that advances the entrepreneurial epoch from validated learning to learning velocity. To catapult HAI Innovation, entrepreneurs must recalibrate and enter a new paradigm of entrepreneurship: Coevolutionary Entrepreneurship, the Last Mile of Entrepreneur Support. In this new era, the manifesto for innovation is: 1. Human Agency guides networked systems of trusts that become engines for catalyzing traditional approaches, 2. Cognitive Loops accelerate learning velocity, 3. Intelligence is compunded, and 4. Innovation and humanity thrive through coevolution. This is the way…
A deep heartfelt thank you to everyone that has contributed to this journey. Its been an incredibly fruitful ride that started with volumes of aspiration. Its not ending, but I am acknowledging a shift in focus that warrants me to share how grateful I am and feel for being a part of the Jacksonville Entrepreneurial Laboratory. Thank you. Carlton L. Robinson 11-15-2025