Meet M. von Nkosi | Architect and Senior Advisor: Special Projects

We had the good fortune of connecting with M. von Nkosi and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi M. von, what are you inspired by?
I’m inspired by civil society and have a deep love of cities.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I run two companies, The MXD Collaborative, Inc., founded in 1992 (dba Liquid Studios 360), and the Institute for Local Innovations, Inc., a 501c3 formed in 2012 (headquartered outside of Atlanta) seeking out and elevating community development innovators and their efforts to improve society. With a primary focus on identifying and elevating the next generation of “mission-driven” leaders and entrepreneurs focused on improving the human condition.

I created MXD/Liquid nearly 30 years ago with the insight that people perform service or work best with specific talents for specific tasks in specific moments in time. Once that project is done in the allotted time, that particular collaborative is disbanded. The experts go their separate ways until another opportunity presents itself where other collaborative needs to be formed. In the early 90s this, “mission impossible” or “Avengers” style of team formation to complete projects was a radical notion. The old model of companies was you have an office filled with people dozens, scores, or hundreds of people, making payroll every two weeks whether the skills of those people were needed or not.

The job of the “rainmakers” was to keep seeking projects, whether they wanted to or not, in order to keep feeding the beast, to justify staff size and an appearance of prestige and capacity/competency. With my roots in design, building/construction space, I understood the cyclical nature of the US economy, with rises and falls roughly every ten years.

It results in ups and downs in work and project opportunities and its impact on what used to be called “staff firings” to euphemistically being called “layoffs.” At the age of 28, when I officially incorporated, I wasn’t going to fall into that big office trap for the notion of being successful or perceived as successful. I would have to pay rent in someone’s office building and have a staff of people, whether I needed them or not, to do the projects and work that I wanted to do. I decided in the “collaborative” (network) model and a lifetime of deep professional relationship network building, not broad and shallow relationships, that I would be positioned to call on between 100 to 200 experts across a score of disciplines and cities to address the needs of clients in a bespoke manner. Not only is the model most cost-effective for my company, not carrying unnecessary business expenses, but also for clients who know that the service being provided is explicitly based on their needs and not our need to make payroll.

Our collaborative model keeps the imagination and envisioning fresh from the standpoint of innovation because it has a built-in network effect of diversity of project approach and thought leadership. It allows for adaptation as it thrives in ambiguity and allows for the assembled team to pivot to address client needs. Clients sometimes have a notion of what they want but don’t know exactly and, more often than not, have a notion of what they want versus what they need. For the better part of three decades, the collaborative model has had the benefit of bringing fresh perspectives to the table. Unfortunately, freshness can be lost within a fixed culture. People who’ve been together for a long time and doing things the same way over and over across years on end can lead to a built-in “groupthink” where innovation gets lost.

For both Liquid Studios and the Institute, our mission is to help our clients see around corners and discover possibilities outside conventional thinking. Our mission has taken us to a diversity of projects and skillsets that have included mobile phone platform design, investment capital raising (Mi Rialiti), as well as partnerships for technology transfers in collaboration with NASA and their partners and HBCUs and MSIs.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Since I’ve been a resident of Atlanta since 1979, I have to take them some of the classics, spots in Little Five Points. From vintage clothes shops to restaurants, tattoo shops, and a black box theater.

Then there is all-things midtown, like the High Museum of Art, Cafe Intermezzo, R. Thomas for that meal you have to have 2am or 3am. We cross Piedmont Park to hit some restaurants and maybe catch a movie at the Promenade. Then walkabout another 15 mins along the Beltline to Ponce City Market. We’ll put another 20mins on our shoes to keep walking along the Beltline to Krog Market the Old Fourth Ward. We’ll stop to visit at the home of a 80+ year old colleague and mentor about an hour to give my best friend a real history of Atlanta. Then walk up to the MLK Jr Center after first stopping by his birth home. On the way back along the Beltline, we’ll stop by Af. Am-owned tea shop for a sip and pick up some unique tea blends.

Other days might include shopping at Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza as part of the Buckhead experience, including grabbing a coffee at the Disco Starbucks.

If it is the right time of year and day, enjoy the pop-up Farmers Market as we’ll walk back through Piedmont Park and pick up some fresh items for dinner. After that, we walk up to the renovated Colony Square for drinks and or a movie.

All of this week-long touring would be via walking and MARTA as the primary means of travel. We’ll ride all the train lines and hop on and off to experience what different parts of the city/region have to offer. Including, but not limited to, downtown, East Point, Downtown Decatur, Vine City, Ashby/AU Center, and the outer edges in Alpharetta and Sandy Springs.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
So there are two people: John I. Rivers and Hattie B. Dorsey

group: Black Women leaders, who have been the foundation of my client base since 1992 through present

organization, W.K. Kellogg Foundation

book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs 1961

etc that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?

Who else deserves a little credit and recognition in your story?

Dr. Gail Christopher, Angela Glover Blackwell, Clara Axam, Mtamanika Youngblood, Andy Copassaki, Nona Cheeks, William Buster, Young Hughley, Bill Bolling, Valerie H. Rawls, and some 55 investors 90% BIPoC ranging between 18 and 80+, made up of architects, communications/media experts, educators, environmentalists, journalists, lawyers, medical doctors, philanthropists, politicians, real estate developers, students, technologists, and others. They hail from cities across the country — Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Gary, Houston, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Raleigh, San Diego, San Francisco, Silver Spring, MD, and Washington, DC.

Website: liquidstudios360.com ili360.org. mirialiti.com www.von.studio

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/von/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mvonnkosi/

Twitter: @vonNkosi

Youtube: https://youtube.com/user/LiquidStudios360

Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-note-podcast/id1128144459?mt=2