Q&A: Professor Jerry Davis on B+I’s Commitment to the Detroit Business Community

Over the next 10 years, the University of Michigan plans to boost its presence in Southeast Michigan, with a special focus on Detroit. For more than 30 years, Michigan Ross has been working hand in hand with Detroit businesses, building strong connections between local entrepreneurs and the university. We asked Jerry Davis, professor of management and organizations, to answer some questions specifically about Business+Impact’s work in Detroit and how it is beneficial to business owners and students.

How has your team made a positive difference in Detroit over the past 30 years, and what are your plans to support the University’s long-term vision?

Ross has a long history of partnering with numerous local organizations, government agencies, and community leaders to support community, educational, and economic development in Detroit and Southeast Michigan.

I am especially proud of the work that the B+I team has done to support local entrepreneurs and small businesses through programs like the Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project. DNEP has helped over 900 small businesses in Detroit grow by building up their accounting, marketing, technology, design, and legal competencies. Along the way, it has introduced hundreds of U-M students to Detroit and its people through face-to-face engagements that encourage more of our graduates to stay in Detroit and Michigan. Since teaming up with B+I in 2024, DNEP has worked with 200 businesses and approximately 500 students per year.

In addition, our Golub Capital Nonprofit Board Fellows Program has worked with 400 nonprofits in Southeastern Michigan over the past 25 years, helping build up their boards and directors through personal strategic engagement by our graduate students. The program places graduate students on the boards of nonprofits to bring about a significant project at the board level, providing free, high-quality, essential services.

In the next two years, the university will open the Center for Innovation in Detroit, and Ross is slated to have its own space there. We hope it will be a place where students and businesses can collaborate on new business ideas. 

One of B+I’s most well-known programs is DNEP. You recently received a grant to expand DNEP’s work with small businesses and nonprofits in Detroit. How do you plan to use that grant?

We plan to conduct four outreach workshops in Detroit to teach small businesses how to use artificial intelligence to build their businesses. We hope these workshops evolve into a robust program to help small businesses in Detroit utilize AI to accomplish some of the more menial business tasks so that they can focus on the aspects of their business they love best.

We will work with students this summer to develop the curriculum for these workshops. We aim to reach small businesses like stores, barbershops, restaurants, and tax accounting firms to teach basic AI skills and introduce user-friendly tools. These tools can help them implement new processes to manage aspects of their business more efficiently, allowing them to grow faster than they would have otherwise.

What other B+I programs have made a positive difference in the Detroit community, and why are these programs beneficial for students as well as business partners?

The programs that make the biggest impact in the Detroit community are DNEP and the Nonprofit Board Fellows Program. These programs help businesses thrive and engage our students in meaningful work that lets them apply what they learned in the classroom to help real businesses achieve their goals. We’ve had students who have taken a year of accounting courses, and maybe it was not the most thrilling thing to learn in a classroom. But then they sit down with somebody and learn about their business, which helps them visualize the data behind it using accounting, and realize that the accounting skills they’ve learned in the classroom can significantly improve real-world business operations.

Our students also learn more about what Detroit has to offer. To a surprising extent, people come to Ann Arbor to go to college without ever setting foot in Detroit. These projects are a great opportunity for students to come away from the experience and say, “Michigan is great, and Detroit is great, and instead of moving to Chicago, New York, or San Francisco, I should set up in Detroit.”

Outside of those programs, our impact in Detroit is more indirect. We fund some summer internships for students, some of whom work in Detroit and Southeast Michigan. I also teach a +Impact Studio course, BA670: Translating Research into Practice, that is focused on the green energy transition and creating green energy businesses in Detroit.

Are there any opportunities for other faculty and staff to get involved with B+I in Detroit?

For faculty and staff, if you work with a nonprofit or know someone who works with nonprofits, the Nonprofit Board Fellows Program is currently recruiting clients for next year’s intake. Last year, we had about 40 nonprofits; this year, we hope to have 60.

For faculty specifically, DNEP is a good source if you need access to small businesses in Detroit, either as clients for a course or as research subjects. For example, Lecturer Amy Angell teaches a marketing class, and 100% of her clients come from DNEP.