The Changing Landscape of Innovation in Illinois (SSTI Conference Guest Blog Post)
John Flavin, Executive Director, Chicago Innovation Exchange
Published: September 16, 2014
Change happens as a result of crisis. The changing landscape you see today in Illinois is a direct result of the crisis of the Great Recession in 2008. Economic uncertainty caused many larger organizations to cut back on people, research, and development, leading many people to search for new ways to secure their future. The effect of this shift created a culture open to innovation, and a hunger to create an ecosystem that could support and sustain new entrepreneurs and their start-ups.
As the executive director of the Chicago Innovation Exchange at the University of Chicago, I’m particularly excited about the innovation ecosystem developing in Illinois. We have all of the pieces to become a thriving center for innovation:
- Renowned universities with leading science, technology, design and engineering programs, including the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Northwestern, Illinois Institute for Technology, Northern Illinois, Southern Illinois and many others
- Nearby national labs including Argonne, Fermilab and the USDA Agriculture Laboratory
- Research parks, incubators and accelerators, such as 1871, MATTER, PeoriaNext, UI-EnterpriseWorks, UIC-Healthtech, Impact Engine, TechStars and many more
- Existing corporations able to provide services, mentoring and investment to new entrepreneurs and start-ups
- Available funding from venture capitalists, angel investors, private equity, and other sources for the various stages of a venture
- Organizations dedicated to supporting science, technology and innovation, as well as networking and mentorship, such as the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition, the Chicago Innovation Mentors, iBIO Propel, and Clean Energy Trust
We’re in the infant stages of pulling all of the pieces of the community together to create an environment that inspires entrepreneurs to build and keep their companies in Illinois. You can see the momentum building in tech, with the growth of companies like Google, GrubHub, Braintree, Yelp and more. It’s important to create spaces for the people in these disparate communities to connect and interact. These connections add the final element that is often needed to create a breakthrough business – serendipity.
It’s with this goal in mind that we’re working to create an environment of collaboration and connectivity, and one element of that is our physical location in the center of the neighborhood in Hyde Park. The location gives us the opportunity to connect directly with the bustling activity on 53rd Street and the surrounding community. As well, the CIE is designed to encourage connections and collaboration through its openness and variety of spaces. We’re also building partnerships between the CIE and other universities, corporations, incubator hubs and accelerators, and the national labs to encourage innovators from a variety of backgrounds and industries to share the space and interact, inspire and, perhaps, edify each other’s ventures.
As we reconnect to our roots as entrepreneurs and create a new network for technology and innovation, we’re seeing a new vision emerging and it’s an exhilarating time to be a part of the innovation ecosystem in Illinois.
John Flavin is the Executive Director of the Chicago Innovation Exchange at the University of Chicago. He is an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in the life sciences field focused on finance and operations. Prior to joining the CIE, Flavin was the Executive Director of Chicago Innovation Mentors, a consortium of the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Illinois, Argonne National Laboratory, and iBIO Propel focused on commercializing complex technology innovation and entrepreneurship. Mr. Flavin led the early planning and launch of MATTER, a new biosciences innovation center in downtown. John is also a board member at the Illinois Science and Technology Coalition and sits on the World Business Chicago ChicagoNEXT CleanTech committee.