Founders' Meeting #3

  1. Check-in:
    1. Introduction to new team members
    2. Introduction to host center
  2. Update:
    1. Resume exchange: review the progress
    2. Speakers event
  3. To do:
    1. Future events planning: Innovation Center competition
    2. Figuring out the ICoN business model
    3. Guaranteeing the involvement of members
    4. Location of ICoN
  4. Next steps

Notes

  1. Check-in: Have to ensure
    1. Introduction to new team members:
      1. Ken Lee, Schneider Electric. Expertise, experience: equipment, communication equipment. System architecture for industrial automation. Focus: consistent inter-operable technical units serving different technical units of the business. Cyber security becoming increasingly more important.
      2. Thomas Sanches, Verizon. Tech strategy development, specializing in 5G, distributed cloud. Focus: Latency improvement . Overall strategy of technologies. Consumer, enterprise, media. Networking technology (the pillar of all 3). Develop strategies for new products and technologies that might emerge.
    2. Introduction to host center (Verizon, Waltham):
      1. Focus: test, verify, make market-ready solutions
      2. Current areas of interest: Development of new business models; Customer experience research, improvement, tackling with new technologies
      3. Technology focus: 5G technologies which compared to 4G have improved: (1) bandwith 8 - 9x; (2) latency (reduced 6x).
  2. Update:
    1. Resume exchange: review the progress
      1. Verizon and Schneider working on inter-center resume exchange.
      2. Communication platform, to centralize communication: Currently informal communication works, and post success stories publicly. At some point figure out how to break communication issues.
    2. Speaker events:
      1. Every month. Pick a topic, pick a location, film, upload a video. In the future, organize the presentations in convenient, notable locations. Speakers from the organization not necessarily the founders.
      2. Deliberate about who is invited to the event. So the speakers and audience are not tired out. Leverage Hubspot to invite a wider audience.
  3. To do:
    1. Future events planning: Innovation Center competition:
      1. Aim: leverage resources to solve issues at a scale. Not all of the issues can be tackled by governments or NGOs, hence leverage the ICoN network, to use technologies, skills to solve global issues.
      2. Presentation of alternative challenges to potentially work on: (1) President's Challenge, Healthcare; (2) UN, Reversing Climate Change; (3) NASA, leverage of hostile environments for food growth, etc.
      3. Presentation of potential process, participation aim: 25 innovation centers, 1 - 5 teams.
      4. Concerns:
        1. Challenge:
          1. Look for a challenge that the foundations would be interested in.
          2. Potential backfiring of social challenge seeming like a social enterprise challenge. If a center doesn't want to participate in a specific challenge, can not participate.
        2. Interested participants:
          1. Majority of Mother companies of ICoN innovation centers would be interested, not necessarily the centers themselves.
        3. Stakeholder alignment:
          1. A lot of the process seems company-oriented - results in a lot of stakeholders, who all need to be aligned. Get company participation, as an employee cannot simply agree. Employees can convince their organization internally.
      5. Potential solutions:
        1. Challenge:
          1. Figure it out through trial & error.
          2. Solving local challenges, increase involvement. Increased access to local talent, government, etc. Local problem that is saleable.
        2. Participation: leverage foundations, and social enterprises of the Mother corporations to reduce IP risks, challenge issues.
    2. Figuring out the ICoN business model:
      1. Innovation center competition: participation fee.
        1. Need to drive the exposure of ICoN, to initially provide the value to the members, then monetize
      2. Currently oriented on individual-based model - moving to a company level model.
      3. Project-specific sponsorship model. E.g. for speaker events, innovation center competition
      4. Subscription to participate in ICoN. When ICoN gains traction.
      5. Opening of innovation centers to the public while the center is not-operational
        1. Issue: individual participation vs corporation participation - alignment of all stakeholders
    3. Guaranteeing the involvement of members:
      1. Value to the members, directly. Workouts, co-working - quick start.
      2. Drive accountability of individual members - committing to specific tasks
      3. Tailored events to the specific interests of members (e.g. fire-side chat about aging with Nicola)
      4. Godfather for each event
    4. Location of ICoN:
      1. Expansion of ICoN beyond to e.g. NY. Distance reduces collaboration.
  4. Next steps:
    1. Send out invitation to the next ICoN meeting. Rasa - send out meeting request email, book.
    2. Locking in the speakers for monthly speaker event
    3. Co-working space, workouts. Rasa - send out e-mail: challenges that would like to tackle.
    4. Communication channel: whatsapp, messenger?