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Saul Kaplan, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, Executive Counselor to the Governor on Economic Growth and Community Development.
Saul, a.k.a. my former very awesome boss, kicked things off at BIF-4 talked about why innovation, particularly collaborative innovation is so important. In a nutshell, innovation is how we solve problems, and we have some whoppers, public education and healthcare for starters. Finding those innovations will increasing require collaboration and thinking horizontally, a process that in Saul’s mind does not come naturally. Finally, enabling those innovations is going to require endless experimenting at an ever-quickening pace. This is conversation which BIF-4 invites.
John Abele, Leader of the Grunion Expedition, Retired Founder/Chairman, Boston Scientific,Chairman, FIRST
John shared his story of how he and his family worked to find not only his father’s WWII submarine a mile deep off the coast of Kiska, Alaska, but also collaborated with others to find relatives of every seamen who went down with the sub over 60 years ago. It’s quite a story.
Marc Ecko, Chairman of the Board and Chief Creative Officer, Marc Ecko
Marc, who has done very cool things on a number of different fronts (fashion, free speech, and education for starters), talked about the importance of objects and how they can inspire and create continuity. Great show and Tell – which I sense will be a theme.
Curt Columbus, Artistic Director, Trinity Rep
Curt linked together communication, media, democracy, and interaction in a way I hadn’t thought about before. He talked about the value of small rooms as a way to communicate and interact with each other in ways we seem to be losing a society. We lack places for random interactions as a result of so many digital distractions. We used to talk to people outside our immediate circles in malls and bowling alleys for example, places that cut across economic status and other divides. He went so far as to say that the end of democracy is in our culture ceasing these random interactions, in other words, this is why the media has such power (we stopped talking to each other). In short, reclaim the small rooms. Interactions are the key.
Alexander Tsiaras, Founder and CEO, Anatomical Travelogue
Alex shared an absolutely ground-breaking online health navigator. The video and graphics are stunning and informative. The site is designed to empower you with the ability to understand your body and your illness by losing the text and using graphics instead. It brings high-end science down to an easy-to-grasp and intuitive graphical interpretation, applicable to physicians as much as to consumers. It also clarifies the dangers of the disease- for instance the $100B this country spends per year on obesity related illness. The site is hugely interactive and launches on Monday.
