The Neurodiversity Center for Innovation
A collaboration between Hope Network and Seamless Ventures to provide grants and pilot-testing opportunities for companies focused on creating environments where everyone can thrive.
We believe that the future should work for every mind.
The world wasn’t built to include neurodiverse brains. At Hope Network, we believe it’s time to change that. That’s why we partnered with Seamless Ventures to create the Neurodiversity Center for Innovation (NCI)—turning inclusion into something practical, testable, and scalable.
What
The NCI is a first-of-its-kind platform launched by Hope Network in partnership with Seamless Ventures. It brings neurodiverse voices, researchers, employers, and innovators together to identify real-world barriers and design inclusive solutions. Rather than treating neurodiversity as a challenge to overcome, the Center reframes it as a source of creativity, insight, and progress.
Why
Across work, education, healthcare, and everyday life, systems are still designed around narrow definitions of "normal." Neurodiverse individuals are often expect to adapt to environments that don’t reflect how they think, learn, or interact. This not only limits opportunity, it limits innovation. When diverse ways of thinking are excluded, everyone loses.
How
The Center operates as a living innovation lab, using a proven, human-centered design model. Challenges are defined with people who have lived experience, solutions are co-designed with mission-aligned partners, and ideas are tested within Hope Network’s real-world environments—then refined and scaled for broader impact.
Right now, the world views neurodiverse diagnoses as a disadvantage. But they’re not.
Autism can bring deep focus and exceptional memory. Dyslexia is often linked to creativity and big-picture thinking. ADHD can drive innovation and hyper-focus. The challenge isn’t neurodiversity. It’s designing systems that allow these strengths to thrive.
We’re creating a living innovation lab.
We start by defining real-world challenges alongside people with lived experience. From there, we recruit mission-aligned innovators, award targeted grants, and test solutions within Hope Network’s real environments. Each project is evaluated for impact and scalability—so what works doesn’t stop at a pilot, but becomes a model others can use.
Here’s a look at our step-by-step process.
Enterprises, researchers, and neurodiverse voices come together to identify critical barriers and opportunities.
We Invite diverse, mission-aligned innovators to bring fresh approaches to the table.
We’ll fuel innovation with targeted investments. Selected innovators receive funding and support to optimize testing and accelerate winning solutions to scale.
Solutions are developed through iterative design and implements across real-world Hope Network environments.
From research insights to scalable models, each lab cycle generates actionable results and lasting inclusion.
Hope Network already has the ideal pilot environment.
Here, innovation happens in real-world settings, with real people. Every day, we serve thousands across a wide range of diagnoses and life experiences, giving us insight that can’t be replicated in theory alone. Our work spans care homes, therapy clinics, workforce programs, transportation services, and more—allowing ideas to be tested across multiple environments. And with more than 60 years of experience and 125+ locations across Michigan, we offer the scale and diversity needed to move pilots from concept to proof.
Seamless has built this model before. And it’s working.
Through FLITE, one of the first airport-based innovation labs in the country, Seamless helped transform accessibility challenges into real-world solutions. By testing ideas in a live environment at Gerald R. Ford International Airport and scaling what worked, FLITE proved that when the right partners, people, and places come together, inclusive innovation can move from concept to impact.
