Five Questions With: Saul Kaplan

Saul Kaplan started the Business Innovation Factory, also known as BIF, in 2005, with a mission to help leaders explore and test transformational business models. Since then, the BIF Collaboration Innovation Summit has grown into an annual event attracting hundreds of people from all over the world. Kaplan, BIF’s founder and chief catalyst, talked with Providence Business News about BIF and this year’s summit, planned for September 16-17 at Trinity Repertory Co. featuring 30 storytellers. Featured speakers include Ivy Ross of Google Glass; Simon Majumdar, an “Iron Chef” judge; and Joshua Davis, contributing editor for Wired.

PBN: Where did you get the idea for BIF?
KAPLAN:
BIF started 10 years ago as an economic development strategy to help turn Rhode Island into an innovation hotspot. Rhode Island needed then, and still needs now, to make innovation and entrepreneurship more central to its economic future. In my leadership role at the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation (RIEDC) I was traveling around the state yakking about an idea I called “innovation @ scale”, or how to turn Rhode Island’s small size into a strategic advantage. We asked, what if we could position Rhode Island as a place where it is easier to innovate, for leaders to take transformational ideas off of the whiteboard and to explore them in the real world? What if Rhode Island was a place where innovators and entrepreneurs came to explore and test their ideas before scaling them nationally and globally? When it comes to innovation, being small is good!
We imagined a path to enable stronger, more innovative, local companies creating great jobs for citizens. People started asking me “how” questions and I founded BIF as an important part of the answer. BIF helps leaders explore and test new business models. It helps leaders move from tweaking the way things currently work to re-imagining, prototyping, and testing transformational new approaches to creating, delivering, and capturing customer value. Over 10 years BIF has created a national community of like-minded innovation junkies through sponsored project work in our Experience Labs and by convening our annual Collaborative Innovation Summit here in Providence. I can’t believe we celebrated BIF10 in September and are planning for our 11th summit, BIF2015, scheduled for Sept. 16-17.

PBN: Have you been surprised at how people have responded to this event? How do you attract so many people from around the world to the event?
KAPLAN:
I’m not surprised but always grateful and inspired by the impact of the BIF Summit. The two days of the summit are the most inspiring for me every year. Of course we have 32 amazing storytellers every year, sharing their personal transformation stories, to catalyze a reaction at the Summit but it’s the 550 participants from around the world that create the magic every year. People who come to a BIF Summit are true innovation junkies. They do not have to be convinced that we need to change and to explore transformational approaches, they come prewired. BIF Summit participants know that the real gold is in the grey areas between our silos, sectors and disciplines. They know that random collisions of unusual suspects is the way to learn something new. They know that the responsibility to mine the grey areas for new connections and ideas is theirs. We create the conditions and BIF Summit attendees take it from there. We don’t have boring break outs or Q and As. We get the reaction started and a room full of innovation junkies never cease to inspire.
I swore when I founded BIF that we would never have a boring chicken dinner with boring speakers as a fundraiser. The BIF Summit is anything but. Through the years, people who attend consistently say the summit is life changing. It is for me.

PBN: What do you hope people come away with after attending the event?
KAPLAN:
We don’t prescribe the outcomes for BIF’s Collaborative Innovation Summits. We trust the audience to connect, inspire and transform in ways that are personally relevant. I’m always grateful when people come up to me, not just during the summit, but throughout the year to share their personal stories of how BIF has helped them to reinvent themselves, their organizations and their communities. BIF’s mission is to make transformational change safer and easier to manage. The BIF Summit is loaded with inspiring people who are trying to go up the reinvention curve and are open to new ideas, approaches and connections. I always say the BIF Summit is less an event than a community. The conversations and connections started at the summit continue throughout the year resulting in amazing collaborations.
The hardest part of any innovation process is changing your lens. If you see opportunity only through your existing lens and by colliding only with usual suspects your innovation horizon is destined to be limited. The best you can hope for is incremental change. Transformational change requires starting with a new lens. BIF is all about fitting people with a new lens.

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PBN: How is advance registration going? How many speakers do you expect for the actual event in September? Is it difficult to find storytellers?
KAPLAN:
Registration tracks the same every year. Early registrants who want to take advantage of the available discount ($1,800) and procrastinators who don’t mind paying the full registration cost ($2,000) who like to see the entire lineup of 32 storytellers before committing. We sell out every year filling Trinity Rep with 550 innovation junkies. We will also be rolling out our annual scholarship program shortly to make sure that students and nonprofit leaders are fully represented at the summit.
The summit storyteller curation process is one of our favorite activities at BIF every year. We only have room for 32 and take the curation process very seriously. We are always open to suggestions for storytellers that represent and can share a compelling personal story of transformation. We look for an eclectic mix and value stories from unexpected people, places, sectors, and perspectives. We never pay our storytellers and are always grateful that they are willing to share themselves and their personal stories at our event. Our storytellers don’t just show up and give a talk they have given before, they share a personal story and then remain at the summit to collide with other storytellers and participants. This year’s lineup will be no different. How many events do you go to where you will hear a personal story and be inspired by the head of Google Glass, a judge on the Food Network’s Iron Chef and a world class steep ski mountaineer?

PBN: Your past job as head of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation (which preceded the R.I. Commerce Corporation) has given you unique insight into Rhode Island’s strengths and weaknesses; What do you see as the greatest challenges facing RI?
KAPLAN:
I love Rhode Island. It is a special quirky place. Our state is loaded with unusual suspects worthy of colliding with. I believe our people are our greatest asset and that we have what it takes to make this state great. We just have to believe more in ourselves, recognize that we don’t have to wait for institutional leaders to change the place and to get on with co-creating a better place. One or two clicks more on the collaboration meter would be helpful!

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  1. “We just have to… recognize that we don’t have to wait for institutional leaders to change the place and to get on with co-creating a better place.”

    Totally agree, Saul. Here’s a partial solution to help RI’s ailing economy that is right up that alley. Your input is welcome:

    Rhode Island First Initiative
    www.1of52.net/blog
    http://rhodemapri.org/guest-blog-rhode-island-first/
    https://www.facebook.com/rhodeislandfirst