This May, the tenth annual InnoVenture conference connected people with big ideas with those who have needed expertise and resources. In prior years, attendees were on their own to follow up with each other in the days and weeks that followed, so the energy from the conferences dissipated over time.
InnoVenture.com changes that. Sustainable networks of connections created around big ideas presented at the conference persist and grow online. The aerospace and aviation network is one of the most active networks emerging from this year’s conference.
It’s hard to hear Steve Townes give his passionate, high-octane pitch for growing the aerospace and aviation industry in our region without your heart starting to race. He highlights the convergence of technologies in the Carolinas – in automotive, aerospace, electronics/avionics, and advanced materials – that is causing innovation here to boom. This clustering of technologies has already begun here in the Char-lanta mega region, which has 23 million people, a superior workforce and quality of life and is within a day’s drive of 2/3 of the U.S. population. Steve is CEO of Louis Berger Services, which is headquartered in Greenville and part of the $1.1 billion revenue Berger Group. Berger Services recently acquired Hawthorne Services and is seeking complementary acquisitions in aerospace sectors such as aircraft and airfield services as well as logistics and supply-chain services.
Bill McLendon was formerly a colleague of Steve’s at the company Louis Berger acquired, Ranger Services International. Bill graduated first in his class at the U.S. Air Force Academy and is a Rhodes scholar who has now partnered with Ross Perot to become CEO of Perot Aerospace. His firm is a new private equity fund headquartered in Greenville focused on the $225 billion U.S. aerospace market with strong long-term growth potential but which is underserved by the capital markets. Bill is seeking to make investments in companies with annual earnings of $10 to $75 million. Initially he’s looking for companies providing value added aerospace services, but he is also keenly interested in specialty manufacturing.
Jody Bryson, CEO of the South Carolina Technology and Aviation Center, is a different type of participant in the aerospace and aviation network. Jody manages a huge asset, 2,600 acres anchored by the 8,000-foot runway at Donaldson Field where 85 aviation and technology companies are currently located. Jody’s seeking partners for the recently announced International Transportation Innovation Center, a joint economic development initiative between CU-
ICAR and SCTAC to redevelop a significant part of the airport property into a unique test bed for public and private stakeholders interested in sustainable mobility and vehicles to infrastructure connectivity.
Isaac White is the engineering manager at Stevens Aviation, one of the companies at SCTAC. Stevens provides maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) services to government and private plane owners. Their industry has an interesting type of intellectual property called a Supplementary Type Certificate (STC), which is an authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration to perform specified aircraft renovations. Stevens is seeking those who have STCs or ideas that can lead to STCs and who are seeking a MRO partner to commercialize them. Stevens Aviation wants to become an engine of innovation in the MRO industry.
Paul Kumler, president of the engineering firm KTM Solutions, adds even more to the diversity of the aerospace and aviation network. Paul is passionate about his big idea, which he sees as a grand experiment to develop a blended engineering environment yielding practical, innovative, and creative engineering solutions not possible in traditional “engineering specialty silos.” He’s looking for others who want to join in developing this new way of thinking that can help grow the aerospace and aviation industry in the region.
In total, there are 11 big ideas in the aerospace and aviation network at InnoVenture.com. What’s powerful is how participants can collaborate together to create a much more robust and powerful aerospace and aviation network than any of them can alone. InnoVenture.com is working with idea presenters to first introduce their ideas to people they know who are interested in helping make their ideas a reality. So far they have introduced their ideas to around 2,000 people, many of whom have self-identified as interested in helping by following their ideas online. Then InnoVenture.com will promote the entire aerospace and aviation network to the followers of all the ideas in the network, so each idea presenter makes new valuable connections with people they did not previously know.
InnoVenture.com is the first professional social network built around big ideas. People from 30 U.S. states and 32 countries are currently participating. InnoVenture.com itself is a really big idea.
[break]
John Warner is CEO of InnoVenture, whose global Web platform helps people with big ideas attract needed customers, capital, talent and technology. InnoVenture.com partners include major corporations, universities and entrepreneurial companies regionally and around the world.
