Blue Crump is a current instructor and Program Director of the Lighthouse Labs U cohort at Virginia Commonwealth University. ^[1] An industrial product designer by trade, Blue has spent the better part of this decade founding different startups while placing an emphasis on design thinking, as well as innovation and entrepreneurship instruction. I identified Blue as my role model profile because of his experience working as a product designer, but also as someone who has incorporated design thinking into his professional career in ways I hope to. While I have never taken a class from him, he has helped me in the past with different projects I have been working on, so I know just how effective he is at guiding students through the design thinking process. While I do not yet know if I would be a good design thinking instructor, I believe that there is a very good chance that I would want to be in Blue's position within the next 30 years. His path to where he is today was an interesting one, and I hope I end up as good of an entrepreneur as he is.

Biographical Data

Born in Richmond in 1979, Blue spent the early part of his life in Chesterfield County. ^[2] The son of an architect, Blue grew up attending school in the Chesterfield School System, including completing high school at Douglas Freeman. ^[3] Beginning in elementary school, Blue began to develop a passion for science and technology, finding that his ability to complete elementary mathematical computations among the best of his peers. This revelation continued into middle and high school, where he began to take advanced math and science classes. His senior year of high school introduced him to the concept and career path of industrial design, which excited Blue. He identified this field as one he wanted to major in, as it combined the creative critical thinking skills he possessed with the science and technology skills he has mastered.

Now about to turn 40, Blue is an entrepreneur at heart, and is married to another serial entrepreneur, with whom he has two children. Blue came back to Richmond after several years away and currently lives with his family within city limits on the city’s northside. ^[2] Blue enjoys fishing and watching baseball, as well as playing with his children in his front yard.

Academic Background

Virginia Tech

During high school, Blue decided Virginia Tech would be the best fit for him, as it gave him a new experience outside of Richmond while also drawing him in with their top-ranked industrial design program. He began taking classes in the fall of 1998, graduating from the Industrial Design Program in the Spring of 2002. ^[4] Virginia Tech opened many doors for Blue, and he especially admired how “the students' experience culminates in a forward-thinking-global perspective, a capacity for both collaboration and teaching one another, and a sensibility toward ut prosim, the University's pledge for service.” ^[4]

Virginia Commonwealth University

After years away from academia, Blue decided in 2015 to enroll as a part of the first-ever cohort of the Virginia Commonwealth University Master of Product Innovation Program. This program, run by the da Vinci Center for Innovation on campus, is a collaboration of VCU’s School of the Arts, School of Business, College of Engineering, and College of Humanities and Sciences. He gained many of the skills he needed to launch startups and made contacts along the way that helped land him his new position at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Professional Background

After graduation, Blue spent years working as a low-level engineer in the renewable energy sector. However, after several years, he grew tired with slow change and uninspired leadership. This led him to found Urban Grid Solar, where he served as CEO, in Annapolis, Maryland. This experience taught him a lot about entrepreneurship, but he found that he needed more experience working in the renewables sector before he could be fully successful as CEO. As a result, he began working as a senior product manager for another renewable energy company, Clean Currents, in Washington D.C. From his experiences as a senior product manager, he was able to start several different startups over the past six years, including Lumen Energy, Glass Smith, and sayCare. This pushed him into the Master of Product Innovation Program at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he developed his UX/UI design skills. ^[5] After being named one of Style Weekly’s Top 40 under 40, he was hired by the University of Richmond as an adjunct for entrepreneurship and innovation. ^[6] After spending a year there, he joined VCU’s Center for the Creative Economy as a faculty member, as well as starting as Innovator-in-Residence at the da Vinci Center. Finally, his position was transformed into what it is today, as Program Director of Lighthouse Labs U.

Current Position

After many years working on startups and new products, Blue accepted a position with Virginia Commonwealth University in late 2017 as Innovator-in-residence. He provided mentorship and guidance for students working on new ventures or exploring launching their own. Towards the end of 2018, Richmond-based accelerator Lighthouse Labs offered him a new position in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University as the Program Director for the Lighthouse Labs University Initiative. In this position, he will help identify on-campus student-led ventures that have promise, encouraging them to apply to the University Accelerator while continuing to provide mentorship and guidance for those who need it.

Outside of his current position, Blue spends time giving back to the innovation and startup ecosystem in a variety of ways. He commonly gives talks to inspire and help guide new venture creators, including multiple VINE talks and events in conjunction with Richmond Inno. ^[7] He has a series of articles about his green energy ventures on the Richmond Times-Dispatch and in Style Weekly, helping to inspire the local startup community. ^[8] He also supports his wife in her venture, called Mindful Mornings, which is a series of free forums featuring networking and keynote speakers that launched in 2017 and recently expanded. ^[9]

A Closer Look at His Path

While his background it not fully interdisciplinary, I would consider his education transdisciplinary. Virginia Tech focused on taking a multitude of different academic disciplines and combining them into a program that focused on industrial design. These difference disciplines were rarely considered together, however, meaning decisions made were more transdisciplinary than interdisciplinary.

In his current role, Blue must think and look at problems with an interdisciplinary mindset. While he does not self-identify as an interdisciplinarian, he recognizes that he is working more towards that type of understanding every day on the job. ^[2] Currently, his backgrounds in engineering, entrepreneurship, product innovation, business, arts, and humanities and sciences help to inform his current role. He feels that more practice with interdisciplinary studies will help him better understand new student ventures and evaluate their viability more quickly and more efficiently than he does now. ^[2]

His path was not fully predictable when he started college, but his path wasn’t filled with too many twists and turns either. The different ventures he was involved in over the years are a direct result of his industrial design education at Virginia Tech, which eventually led him to the Product Innovation graduate program here at Virginia Commonwealth University. The biggest twist in his career came from largely giving up the startup lifestyle to accept the two positions at Virginia Commonwealth University, even though the design thinking component of his academic background could have helped predict that. Predictable or not, Blue believes all of the experiences he has garnered through the years have made him into the person he is today, and if he went back in time, he wouldn’t change a thing. ^[2]