(From the last CollegeThinkTank. Image via Accelerate)
The barrier between town and gown is about to come crumbling down.
The city's students will be coming together for the third CollegeThinkTank, and their goal? Create an innovation engine so strong it permeates every Boston neighborhood. From Roxbury's Dudley Square to Dorchester's Grove Hall, no neighborhood should be without the power that comes from forward-thinking collaboration.
Wentworth's Accelerate, Innovation + Entrepreneurship Center is once again partnering with the City of Boston's Office of Business Development to deliver real world opportunities to area students. Historically, roughly 20 different schools have been represented at the day-long event, the participants spanning at least 20 different disciplines.
"The more diverse, the better," said Monique Fuchs, Wentworth's associate vice president of innovation and entrepreneurship, rattling off a list of schools students have come from, such as Bunker Hill Community College, Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Suffolk and Emerson.
"Depending on what track you're on, it's hard to meet people with new and diverse disciplines and backgrounds," acknowledged Rafael Carbonell, deputy director for the Office of Business Development. The CollegeThinkTank helps break down campus silos, creating one place for colleges and universities to come together an innovate in a way "that could have an impact on real world needs."
The inaugural CollegeThinkTank, launched last June, focused on filling vacant commercial spaces. And, over the course of the year, the City has tirelessly worked on bringing students' recommendations to fruition. What participants recognized is the need for crowdsourcing. With crowdsourcing, government officials can better understand the needs of three different parties: property owners, small businesses and residents.
The OBD has partnered with citizen feedback platform Textizen and Boston Main Streets to discover what each group is looking for in an innovative way. A styrofoam sign can currently be found in the Washington Gateway Main Street, a business development and neighborhood improvement organization located in the South End, that asks citizens what they would like to see in the community, whether a coffee shop or women's apparel retailer. Residents can text their answer, while also having the ability to submit an option not shown.
The polling happens in real-time and, by working with Main Streets, the City can access both personal opinion and hard data. The organization can tell the OBD what kind of businesses their particular neighborhood is missing. Other pilots of the program include Greater Grove Hall and Upham's Corner, the latter of which Boston Mayor Marty Walsh recently invested $3.1 million in.
Ideas from this CollegeThinkTank, scheduled to be held on Saturday, June 21, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at MassChallenge, will hopefully be implemented with similar urgency.
"The topic this round is really exciting," Fuchs said. The theme has been dubbed "Innovation in the Neighborhoods," forcing students to think about how Boston can support the growth of incubators and accelerators in neighborhoods outside of the standard Innovation District.
Dorchester is now sporting a new co-working space, called the Fields Corner Business Lab. A high-tech accelerator, dubbed Smarter in the City, moved its first cohort of startups into Dudley Square.
"How do you do that in a new and innovative way?" asked Carbonell, in a sort of call-to-action to the city's college students.
The OBD has "an awesome partnership" with the City of Boston's New Urban Mechanics and, together, the two think of this issue constantly. Now, the goal is to bring colleges and universities — who have been clamoring to collaborate more with the City, according to Carbonell — into the conversation.
"They are recognizing, the more they can connect their students to business opportunities and civic needs throughout Boston," Carbonell said, "the more they can get students real world experience."
And that real world experience is what Carbonell has heard participants love most about CollegeThinkTank — which students need to apply for by Friday, June 13. Mayor Walsh will be touching upon the upcoming event at an upcoming event of our own, BostInno's State of Innovation, scheduled to be held at the Westin Waterfront on Thursday, June 12. Join roughly 1,000 business leaders and professionals for an afternoon full of main stage speakers, breakout sessions and panel discussions all focused on how we can drive innovation forward in the various sectors that make Boston the economic engine it is. Grab your tickets now.
Event Registration Online for BostInno's State of Innovation powered by Eventbrite
