Innovation Labs

Now that we’re getting closer to opening, I’m starting to get reenergized about the many possibilities for innovation and collaboration at LaunchPad Coworking.

When we first started inventing a coworking space with a distinctly Austin flavor last summer, I had an idea I called the BrainBank. Basically, I envisioned members creating robust profiles, complete with areas of expertise, demographic information, and professional histories. Members would make a deposit of x hours into the BrainBank. I might deposit 10 hours, then next week invite 3 people to brainstorm with me for 2 hours. I’d then withdraw 6 hours. I thought of the BrainBank as a way to jumpstart some active collaboration.

Once we hit a certain membership threshold, I planned to contact a handful of companies and offer them limited access to this amazing group. They could contact members for focus groups, product testing, brainstorming — whatever they’d need. I got some fantastic feedback from a few execs I talked to about this.

Friday I had a fabulous lunch with Drew Jones of Aquifer Design. He runs an innovation consultancy and is also writing a book on coworking. He started telling me about what Proctor & Gamble had done to foster innovation. Much of it involved internal groups looking outside their areas of expertise — exploring ideas with other groups within and outside of the company. Drew called these Innovation Labs.

Innovation Labs. I love this — it’s a much better name for what I had in mind than BrainBank. Drew went on to instantly refine the idea, too, suggesting that we go ahead and bring executives (or product leads, or whomever) right to LaunchPad Coworking. Get an appropriate set of members together for official sessions of brainstorming and conversation and playing. The opportunities here are huge. Imagine the interesting groups of people we’ll be able to put together!

I think we can completely skip keeping track of hours “deposited” and “withdrawn.” Innovation Labs are tremendous opportunities for everyone involved. The payoff is that the more you give, the more you get back.

This is the kind of thing that gets me more excited about LaunchPad Coworking than anything else — the opportunities for collaboration, the chances to learn, and the prospect of getting to spend time with a lot of smart, creative people.