Reinvention theme of BIF summit

FACTORY WORK: Dava Newman, professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presents at the Business Innovation Factory summit. / PBN PHOTO/STEPHANIE EWENS
FACTORY WORK: Dava Newman, professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presents at the Business Innovation Factory summit. / PBN PHOTO/STEPHANIE EWENS

The daughter and granddaughter of veterans, Stacy Pearsall stuck with the family tradition. She joined the U.S. Air Force straight out of high school, and spent the next decade traveling the world as a military photographer.
That ended when she was injured snapping shots of soldiers fighting in Iraq. She retired from the service with a medical discharge, and then found herself wondering how she would build a career. The answer came when she began photographing fellow veterans she met at VA facilities and elsewhere. Now she’s a commercial photographer, often working for companies that produce police gear, outdoor equipment, and other items that are also used by soldiers, and using veterans as models.
“I’ve found I have a purpose again,” she told 500 attendees who crowded the theater at Trinity Repertory Company Sept. 18th for the Business Innovation Factory’s ninth annual Collaborative Innovation Summit.
The two-day event, organized by BIF founder Saul Kaplan, focused on both self-reinvention and technological innovation. The summit was pitched as a way to stimulate new ideas and featured 30 speakers, or “storytellers,” as Kaplan called them.
“When you want to learn how to reinvent your business, the last people you should be talking to are the same old group of consultants saying the same old thing,” said Kaplan, the former director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation. “You should be talking to people who are successfully reinventing themselves.”
The BIF Summit was inspired by a similar event, the TED conferences, run by the nonprofit Sapling Foundation and held each year in Long Beach, Calif. The TED acronym stands for “technology, entertainment and design.”
Organizers of the BIF Summit acknowledged the connection to the TED conferences with an unscheduled talk by Richard Saul Wurman, an architect and graphic designer who helped launch the first TED event in 1984. Wurman, a Newport resident, used his time to announce his latest spin on storytelling, the 555 Conference, a global event planned for 2014. It will take place in five cities around the world, on five consecutive Mondays. At each event, there will be talks by five people – a total of 25 – whom he described as “exceptional global experts.” The goal is to present predictions for the next 10 years. Wurman described it as “intellectual jazz.” Writer Evan Ratliff grabbed the crowd’s attention when he talked about his efforts to publish long-form magazine journalism incorporating networking sites, video, photography and other things available on the Internet.
His quest began with his interest in Jay Gatsby characters. “As a journalist, I’ve always enjoyed writing stories about people who reinvent themselves,” he said. He talked with editors at Wired Magazine, and they assigned him to write an article in which he personally set about to do that. He created a new identity for himself, going so far as to don disguises, and disappeared from sight. At the same time, he challenged Wired readers to find him, and the magazine offered a $5,000 reward. A group of readers eventually tracked him down in New Orleans.
Easton LaChappelle, a 17-year-old from Colorado, was the youngest storyteller. He recently grabbed national attention by building a low-cost, lightweight, robotic, prosthetic arm in his parent’s garage. Such a device typically costs an amputee about $80,000; LaChappelle built his for $400. One way he reduced costs was by using a 3D printer, a technology that recently has become less expensive and more widely available. Since then, he’s visited the Whitehouse to demonstrate the arm for President Barack Obama. “It’s been quite a journey,” he told the crowd.
Howard Lindzon, a Canadian hedge-fund manager and financial analyst, encouraged attendees to look beyond the usual sources when they need capital for growth, and consider things like crowd-sourcing, a way of raising money using Internet forums. He pointed to LaChappelle’s robotic arm, and noted that 3D printing is a trend that analysts largely missed.
“We’ve gone from the age of financial leverage to what I call the age of social leverage,” Lindzon said. “We’ve done that by using the tools of today.” •

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