PROVIDENCE – Saul Kaplan, founder of the nonprofit Business Innovation Factory and former executive director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, has got a new role: columnist for BusinessWeek.
Kaplan has been asked to join the pool of columnists who write for the online edition of BusinessWeek, which also publishes a weekly magazine. Melissa Withers, the Business Innovation Factory’s executive director, said Kaplan would be a regular contributor.
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In his first column, published on Monday, Kaplan calls for the country to set out a national innovation agenda.
“If we want bold change, we have to allocate more of the federal investment to the design and testing of new approaches that are not constrained by existing ones,” Kaplan writes. He goes on to highlight the need for innovation in education, health care and the federal government.
“I used to think you could catalyze innovation by proselytizing. You can’t,” he writes. “It is more important to network today’s innovators from every imaginable silo, sector and discipline in purposeful ways. … Our future depends on it.”
BusinessWeek, which marks the 80th anniversary of its debut this year, is owned by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
Withers said Kaplan’s association with BusinessWeek extends back over a number of years. He talks regularly with Helen Waters, editor for BusinessWeek.com’s Innovation and Design Channel, and they follow each other on the micro-blogging site Twitter. In addition, BusinessWeek editor Bruce Nussbaum has co-hosted the nonprofit’s annual BIF summit, the fifth iteration of which is coming up in October.
“They believe in what we do,” Withers said. The group is hard at work on the BIF-5 summit and organizing a range of activities at its new offices on Valley Street in Providence.
The Business Innovation Factory (BIF) is a nonprofit entity exploring business-model innovation, seeking to move ideas from concept to execution as quickly and cost effectively as possible. Additional information is available at BusinessInnovationFactory.com.
