Providence center to encourage business innovation

When the R.I. Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship opens its doors, either this month or next, it will complete the three-pronged approach the R.I. Economic Development Corporation sees as necessary for business growth and development in the Ocean State.
“From our perspective at EDC, there are three ways to create jobs in Rhode Island,” EDC Director of Business Development Katharine Flynn said in an interview last week. “One is to build them from the ground up. One is to help companies that are already here grow. And the other is to attract companies. … What we didn’t have was a real effort in helping people start businesses.”
The center will be a place where local innovators can create a business model and get new businesses off the ground, Flynn said. The center’s curriculum and offerings haven’t been nailed down, but ideas include mentoring and business-model courses.
“This is a place for all entrepreneurs in Rhode Island to get help,” she added. The EDC and other organizers are now starting to gather “best practices” from similar centers around the United States.
The center got its informal start about eight months ago, when then-EDC Executive Director Saul Kaplan recognized the need for starting new businesses and began talking with Brown University about opening such a center, Flynn said. When Kaplan left his post at the EDC in December, the project was taken up by Flynn and interim Executive Director J. Michael Saul.
“We brought to the table not just Brown, but other collaborators throughout the state,” Flynn said.
Now the center is set to open this spring in a Brown University-owned building, One Davol Square, in Providence’s Jewelry District. Brown is set to donate use of that 5,000-square-foot space.
Other potential collaborators include Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and the University of Rhode Island (URI), along Lifespan hospitals, the City of Providence and the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. Although those institutions have expressed interest, their relationships with the center don’t yet involve funding.
All together, a total of $200,000 has been pledged start the center.
In its first year, the center will be funded by $50,000 from the EDC – approved by the EDC board on Feb. 23 – along with $25,000 from both the Slater Technology Fund and the R.I. Science and Technology Advisory Council (R.I. STAC).
Both the Slater Fund and STAC have approved an additional $25,000 to fund the program through 2010. And EDC has pledged another $50,000, “but because we’re subject to budget approval, there’s a clause in the [memorandum of understanding] that our share is subject to that budget approval,” Flynn said.
Brown will hire an executive director for the center, who must be approved by EDC, she added.
The center “will be a nonprofit, but it’s not set up as a separate 501(c)3 organization. Not yet, anyway,” Flynn said. And in the future, there will be “an active pursuit of [private sector partners],” added Andy Cutler, an EDC spokesman.
Flynn said the Slater Fund might also fund some of the businesses that are formed at the center.
Newport County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Keith W. Stokes, a member of the EDC board, last week stressed that the center’s reach should extend beyond both higher education and Providence.
Aquidneck Island, which has “the state’s largest concentration of software-engineering companies,” should also be able to reap the benefits of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, he said.
Stokes added, “I wanted to ensure that the private sector, particularly small-business entrepreneurs, engineers and research scientists that exist at a number of companies throughout the state and who might have an emerging technology that they’d like to bring to market, [could use] the type of resources offered by this type of center.”
Flynn added that the inclusion of URI will also extend the reach of the center.
And the center might work cooperatively with the Business Innovation Factory (BIF), another nonprofit created in part by Kaplan, Flynn said.
“The Business Innovation Factory’s mission is not to help entrepreneurs get their businesses started,” she said. “They are looking at ways to change and innovate around different business models. … It’s a totally different model.”
For the new center, buildout is now in its initial stages and Flynn said there have been preliminary talks with RISD architects to help design the space. It will be “sort of a collaborative-type space,” she said. “We envision conference rooms and those types of spaces, where people can come and get mentored.” •