Joost Bonsen is an innovation ecologist studying exponential technologies and new venture dynamics across multiple scales. He serves as Lecturer in Media Arts & Sciences at MIT, teaching the Media Ventures, Development Ventures, and Revolutionary Ventures classes as well as the Understanding MIT, Future Explorations, and Nuts & Bolts of New Ventures seminars.
A former lead organizer of MIT's $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, Joost helped grow the Competition by an order of magnitude, create the Emerging Markets / Development Track, and continues to serve on the Board. He has previously served as Board member of the MIT Enterprise Forum (both Cambridge & Global), the MIT Global Startup Workshop, and the MIT Muddy Charles Pub. In the mid-1990s Joost created and ran the MIT Founders Study, the first global census to quantify the economic impact of MIT-related entrepreneurs, findings later published by BankBoston as MIT: The Impact of Innovation.
Joost is co-creator of Howtoons, producer of educational cartoons which show kids everywhere "How To" build things using everyday materials and tools. For over a decade he hosted a weekly television show called Maximizing Progress (previously High Tech Fever) creating some 500 unique interviews with inventors, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, professional service providers, and more, and has run dozens of entrepreneurial networking VentureNights at the MIT Muddy Charles Pub since the mid-1990s, as noted in The Venture Café book and The Economist.
Joost earned his Bachelor's in Bio-Electrical Engineering at MIT as well as the Sloan Fellows (then MOT Management of Technology) Master's degree at MIT Sloan and wrote his thesis on The Innovation Institute: From Creative Inquiry Through Real-World Impact at MIT.
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