Innovation group builds network of young leaders

It looked like a networking event: A crowd of mostly young professionals shared laughs and traded business cards over beer and appetizers. But the guests at this mixer had a challenge – to come up with new ideas to spur Rhode Island’s economy.

Perhaps such a call to action should be expected at an event sponsored by the Business Innovation Factory, which refers to the gathering of young professionals as N-GEN (short for Next-Generation Network).

Melissa Withers, a staffer at BIF, said she formed N-GEN late last year to infuse the nonprofit with ideas from young innovators. And the group has already grown from a few local professionals to a network of about 110 people from around the world, she said.

Participants include industrial designers, entrepreneurs, artists and other professionals. “Our membership [fee for BIF] makes it difficult for young individuals to just come in, so it was important for me to make sure that we didn’t exclude young people,” Withers said.

The nonprofit offers young people “scholarships” that cover entry fees to its summits and events. “A lot of [BIF] projects require the kind of energy and thinking and connectivity that young people are really good at,” Withers noted.

BIF was launched last year by Saul Kaplan, then the deputy director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, with the intention of fostering the growth of the state’s innovation economy. Independent of the EDC, but dependent to a large degree on its people and resources, BIF aims to use Rhode Island as a testing ground for new business models and ideas. Its membership includes national corporations, universities and state-affiliated agencies.

At an N-GEN gathering on May 11, Kaplan, the acting director of the EDC, encouraged the guests to get involved in the dialogue on innovation. “A lot of the meetings that I go to, you’re not there,” he told them, “and that’s a mistake.”

Curt Worden, president and executive producer of Tango Pix, the Providence video and multimedia production company that hosted the N-GEN event, told the guests that Tango Pix needs graduates from the city’s colleges and university.

“I need you,” Worden told N-GEN members at his company. “Every time a [Rhode Island School of Design] or a Brown University student leaves, we feel like we’ve lost something.”

Already, members of the new group have started collaborating on projects. Three are spearheading an effort to attract more young professionals to Providence, taking on the so-called “brain drain” in the state.

Matthew Guilford, a 23-year-old research analyst at the EDC, decided to take up the project after seeing that there were few people his age in Providence. In fact, he told his peers at the N-GEN event, the city needs 7,000 more people ages 25 to 29 to match Boston’s age distribution.

Withers said that Guilford is among several N-GEN members to propose projects, many of which have been posted on BIF’s blog. She called on others in the group to submit ideas to complement one of BIF’s latest endeavors.

Recently, BIF began a project to make Rhode Island the first state with border-to-border broadband wireless service. Called the R.I. Wireless Innovation Networks, the project was the subject of a Reuters story that appeared in publications around the world this month.

BIF is offering a stipend of $1,000 and access to industry experts to the N-GEN member who comes up with the best application for the RI-WINS technology.

“It’s not about the technology,” Withers said at the meeting, “it’s about what you do with the technology.”

After BIF made its pitch to the young innovators, the head brewer of Middletown’s Newport Storm, Derek Luke, said the winning project would also win a case of his company’s beer every month for a year. The unexpected announcement drew loud applause from N-GEN members, many of whom were drinking beer that Newport Storm had donated for the event.

“This is the age group that we want to be involved with,” said Luke, 30, who started brewing Newport Storm seven years ago with two friends from Colby College in Maine. “We wanted to up the ante.”