Innovation Breakfast » Innovation

May 18 Innovation Breakfast

bobbie — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:06:40 +0000

The regular weekly Innovation Breakfast events are usually open networking events — no RSVPs, buy your own coffee and breakfast, sit down, introduce yourself and start networking. Over the past several months, they have evolved into weekly office hours for Bobbie Carlton, one of the creators of Mass Innovation Nights. Companies she is advising drop in with updates. People considering Mass Innovation Nights come to ask questions. Or, new to the area people stop by for guidance. Like Innovation Nights, Innovation Breakfast was designed to support local innovation, connecting local innovators, entrepreneurs, business people and investors, etc. But…

On Friday, May 18, join us for a special hosted Innovation Breakfast at Studio Crossings. (Just down the street and around the corner from our usual location.)

Studio Crossings
14 Spring Street
Waltham, MA 02453

If you’ve stopped by an Innovation Breakfast in the past two years or if you just thought about it, this is the time to come. PLEASE RSVP so we know how much coffee to buy!

We’ll be treated to coffee and breakfast treats by the team at Studio Crossing. (Special thanks to Tamar!)
We’ll go around the room and introduce ourselves.
We’ll be talking about where Innovation Breakfast is heading!

Come if you:

Work with entrepreneurs and startups
Are an entrepreneur or a startup
Like entrepreneurs or startups
Want to be an entrepreneur or startup
Want to see what the fuss is all about

A Special Innovation Breakfast

bobbie — Sun, 06 May 2012 20:51:52 +0000

The regular weekly Innovation Breakfast events are usually open networking events — no RSVPs, buy your own coffee and breakfast, sit down, introduce yourself and start networking. Over the past several months, they have evolved (or should we say devolved) into weekly office hours for Bobbie. (Who committed to coming as long as people keep showing up — and has yet to have a week where she gets work done…)

But every once in a while, we try to do something a little different. So, join us for a special hosted Innovation Breakfast at Studio Crossing. (Just down the street and around the corner from our usual location.) We’ll be treated to coffee and breakfast treats by the team at Studio Crossing. (Special thanks to Tamar!) We’ll be talking about where Innovation Breakfast is heading — RSVP please so we know how much coffee to procure! Come if you:

Work with entrepreneurs and startups
Are an entrepreneur or a startup
Like entrepreneurs or startups
Want to be an entrepreneur or startup

De-Innovating

bobbie — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 16:43:49 +0000

One of the presenters at today’s TEDxSomerville event was Lenni Armstrong. Her presentation: “Depaving the Way” detailed the damage done by an over-abundance of pavement in our urban areas. Run-off can cause flooding. Paved areas don’t allow soil to do its job as a filter to clean the water, removing impurities.

Recently I sat on a panel where the definition of innovation was discussed. One of the panelists was militant about defining innovation — “must provide business value” was part of her definition. You know we’re pretty loose with our definition. (Probably unique amongst the innovation bloggers and supporters in that sense.) We believe that innovation can be anywhere. It can be small, tiny even. And we might not understand the value of a particular innovation immediately. Because someday, you may be able to combine different innovations, mix them together and come up with a truly groundbreaking innovation.

And, speaking of groundbreaking — back to Lenni. With her words and pictures, she told the story of a backyard depaving. Parking in Somerville is precious and so many yards, both front and back in some cases, have been turned into parking. A team of Somervillians dig up a backyard parking area and turned it into a garden. A garden that takes rain water and lets it percolate into the ground, cleaner than when it fell. A rain garden has a beauty of purpose as well as the physical beauty of the flowers and plants.

But not all pavement in Somerville is in the back yards. The streets are paved…obviously. (Not a place where dirt roads are prevalent.) And along those roads, we see hydrants. Fire hydrants. You don’t park in front of them so why is the pavement needed there? In fact, it isn’t. Lenni’s presentation showed someone’s innovation, a fire hydrant rain garden. Take the pavement in front of a hydrant, dig it up and plant some plants. They can get crushed and spring back if a fire truck needs access. Simple innovation. See a problem. See an opportunity. Solve a problem.

December Innovation Breakfasts

bobbie — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:31:38 +0000

As we all know, December is a tough month for events — lots going on! (Check out our Innovation Potluck and this month’s Mass Innovation Nights event.) So, not that we can stop you from swinging by Cafe on the Common and hanging with the other Java-heads but we’ll be at the Social Good 2.0 and the Minute to Win it events.

We’re retooling Innovation Breakfast for 2012 — so far suggestions range from:

Move it around
Don’t move it around
Bi-weekly
Daily
Go back to monthly speaker
Turn this into a calendar for breakfast events everywhere

What do you think? Ideas?

No one here but us chickens

bobbie — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:41:53 +0000

I always say that if no one else shows up for Innovation Breakfast, I’ll at least be able to get some work done. Hasn’t happened yet.

Meanwhile, on most blogs, when you see no blogging, you know that nothing’s happening, so you “move along.” The opposite is true of Innovation Breakfast. When you see no blog post, it means the joint was hopping and I didn’t get to write anything. Sometimes we have a dozen people dropping in, sometimes people come in groups of 1 or 2.

You’ll notice the time of this blog post is after Breakfast hours. We had another good conversation this morning, with someone we’ve been wanting to meet. We learned new stuff and shared ideas and everyone went forth with their day secure in the knowledge that they gained something from the interaction.

Last week, at Innovation Breakfast, we had an excellent discussion on the pros and cons of the Lean Startup concept. One issue I am very aware of is the balancing act companies must deal with — rapid iteration and testing on your customer base versus giving the customer a positive experience. I have seen many companies using Lean Startup concepts alienate a whole class of customers with poor user experiences.

This week I learned about a great program at Rutgers, an accelerated social media MBA, from CutlerDave. I can’t help it — but his name and the “first name last name” architecture of the Twitter ID make me envision him as an odd mashup of Jeff Cutler and SchneiderMike (two social media gurus I know and enjoy.) Since I have been toying with the idea of a social media house party in Vermont (at Red Clover Inn and Restaurant in Vermont), I was very interested in hearing about this program. Social Media House Party fits in really nicely with the Innovation Dinner concept we’ve been discussing at Carlton PR & Marketing, as a way to help more startups and entrepreneurs get the marketing help they need to succeed.

This past week we had the first Innovation Dinner and we assembled ten entrepreneurs to give their input on a project designed to help everyone — not a stealth project just nothing to talk about…yet. We want to do more of these. Ideas? Concepts? We seem to be able to get entrepreneurs together. If you had 10 or 12 entrepreneurs in a room, what would you want to ask them, show them, find out about them? Let us know.

The Best Networking In Boston

bobbie — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 23:54:02 +0000

Every week, the Innovation Nights newsletter comes out with our 3-5 picks for the top events (not always the biggest) of the coming week or events coming up that you may need to register for in advance. This listing is one of our contributions to the area’s innovation economy. Two of the most common questions we get are “Where do you get event information?” and “What are the best networking events in Boston?” While we often get emails directly from event organizers, here’s how you can find out what’s happening in the Boston market on your own.

Start off by checking out these website calendars and event aggregators:

Boston.com
Bostontweetup
Eventbrite
GreenhornConnect
MassHighTech
Meetup
VentureFizz
BostonEventsList.com (or, closer to the North? Check out MaineEventsList.com)

Visit these organizations and check out their events for topics, speakers and panels that interest you:

Make it your practice to regularly visit the websites of the vertical industry organizations and groups you belong to and look at the newsletters they issue. Figure out whom in your circle regularly tweets or blogs about upcoming events. Haunt the LinkedIn groups and review the events posted there.

Where else do you go for event information? Care to share?

Innovation Potluck

bobbie — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 02:37:22 +0000

Even though we had a nice little convivial group at Innovation Breakfast this morning, I think we spent more time talking about the previous evening’s Innovation Potluck, held at the Venture Cafe in Cambridge’s Kendall Square.

Our latest Innovation event was designed as a purely social event for entrepreneurs and innovators who work in small groups or out of their homes often feel the lack of a large group of co-workers at the holidays when seemingly everyone else is out celebrating the season. Sometimes your brain needs a little fun so you can come up with your next innovative idea. It was also a “thank you” to the terrific community who have been so generous with their time and energy, helping out each other.

And, admittedly, a little crazy fun…

Thank-yous! First to Carrie and the whole Venture Cafe team! Thanks for welcoming us into your space, and not asking too many questions about what we had planned. Big thanks to McCarter & English who bought BBQ (Blue Ribbon BBQ no less) for everyone. HUGE thanks to my sidekick for the night, Corey Turner. (Corey, without you, it would have been a tough night!) Thanks to MemoryOnHand for their help (and some cool prizes!) To Sidi and ParellelCity for helping to connect everyone. To Reed who supplied awesome Ginger Cookies (labeled NO NUTS, safe for Bobbie, who is deathly allergic to nuts). To all the folks who brought goodies to share. To BookBlunder and friends who help drag everything down to the car, and Greg who helped drag it upstairs and showed us how to operate the service elevator. To Arlington Bait who supplied the entertainment. (Yeah, you read that right…bait shop — the entertainment.) If you missed it, enjoy! (A shout-out here to my friends at Tyler Place Family Resort who regularly hold “more professional” minnow races. For you winter sports sorts, also check out their year-round Vermont inn and restaurant, Red Clover.)

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Mass High Tech All-Stars and Education

bobbie — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 16:24:07 +0000

Every year local tech business newspaper, Mass High Tech, runs an award program called the MHT All-Stars, recognizing the movers and shakers who make a difference in the local tech economy. The celebration culminates with a party to recognize the winners and give them a chance to say a few words. “No panels, no presentations, just a party,” stated MHT publisher Doug Banks.

“Few” is the operative word here as the winners are charged (for charity) $1 a character for any characters over 140 characters, the length of a tweet. Last year I was uncharacteristically saddened (I like a good short speech) at most of the honorees’ strict adherence to the limits. THIS was the time to go over, in spades. I’m happy to report that 2011 saw a more verbose group, even nonprofit leader MITX’s Kiki Mills went over the limit (she claimed fellow honoree Shawn Broderick was fronting her still-not-too-lengthy speech.) Tim Healy, CEO of EnerNOC Inc., should get a refund since he used his extra characters to talk about hiring between 50 and 100 new positions in the next few months.

Among the movers and shakers are usually a Distinguished Achievement Award Honoree (or, in the case of this year, two.) These honorees had no limits on their speeches. Founder of Analog Devices and Stata Venture Partners Ray Stata and Bernard Gordon, founder of Analogic and NeuroLogica each took a moment to recognize their wives in sweet and charming fashion, and then move on to a more serious topic — educating the next generation of engineers and leaders.

Needless to say, the two gentleman had obviously talked before they spoke, and in well-coordinated, back-to-back speeches, they laid it on the line in no uncertain terms. Today’s schooling is not adequately preparing the next generation to take up where Gordon and Stata have not yet left off. “Today’s engineering students do not come out of school capable of handling complex projects.” “…concerned about the ability to replicate the success of the past.” “We need to encourage our best and brightest to study engineering and science.” (Apologies to both gentlemen if these quotes aren’t perfect, note-taking on an iPhone is challenging.)

Meanwhile, the party goes on around them. Did anyone else notice the challenge being given? A few perhaps.

Instead of worrying about whether there is free beer and a band at the next meetup or whether we throw enough parties, perhaps we should be spending our time encouraging students to spend more time at their studies, or listening to and learning from guys like Stata and Gordon.

Breakfast Discussion: Funding Flexibility

bobbie — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:19:01 +0000

Every week we have some fascinating conversations at Innovation Breakfast. We do introductions, and get to know you and your company but the far-ranging discussions on the industry are among the most compelling reasons to come out to Waltham for coffee on Friday mornings. In keeping with the “Funding Friday” theme (#ff$), we asked for people’s thoughts around getting funded. One experienced entrepreneur told the story of his funding adventures, calling funding a black art, what works once, might not work again.

There are various “happy endings” in funding from the entrepreneurs’ point of view. Funds to go forward building a company. The sale of a company or the product or the IP. The incorporation of technology or the product into another company or another product. Sometimes the intended or expected outcome gets kicked to the curb and something else happens. Looking for funding? Maybe it will end up in a sale. Looking for a sale? Maybe you will end up with partners. People looking for funding need to keep their options open.

The Last Innovation Breakfast…And the First

bobbie — Fri, 21 May 2010 21:51:51 +0000

You always try to go out with a bang…and, boy, did we ever. Bill Warner’s talk on “Startups from the Heart” was fantastic! (Videos are below the break.) And well received by our largest crowd so far. (Yes, we opened up “ticket sales” quite a bit beyond the usual small group.) And, if you were there, you heard us say that Innovation Breakfast is ending. But, wait, what’s that on the horizon?

Starting in June, we’re kicking off a new model Innovation Breakfast. We’re going to partially adopt the #OpenCoffee model and move Innovation Breakfast to Waltham’s Cafe on the Common (677 Main Street, at the corner of Main and Moody.) Over this weekend, we’ll be switching out the Innovation Breakfast website to support this new model. More soon! (Oh, yeah, and suggestions welcomed, nay, encouraged!) And, if you aren’t already a Cambridge “OpenCoffee at Andala” regular, check it out on Meetup.com for the scoop.

More soon!

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