South Shore Innovation is a community of suburban entrepreneurs helping others discover their passions, merge these passions with their ideas, learn through collaboration how to start a company and how to run a company better, and launch successful businesses.
What's different about us?
We are focused on supporting suburban entrepreneurs as spokes to the Boston Innovation Hub. Suburban entrepreneurs are a little bit older, perhaps a little bit wiser, and have life responsibilities that they cherish but that become obstacles to entrepreneurship -- responsibilities such as a spouse, children, a mortgage, and often a full-time job.
What do we believe?
We believe that people in the suburbs often have great ideas and, due to their life and work experiences, these ideas are often better vetted and less whimsical; however, there are greater personal and financial barriers to starting a company than with the younger entrepreneurs who have recently left a university and who still have ties to mentors. We believe that we can support a new way of starting a company that lowers the risk and improves the chances of success.
What do we do?
We have weekly Innovation Round Table discussions with people other than our spouses, who are typically tired of repeatedly hearing all the details of our ideas and work passions. We have special events geared at learning and stimulating creative thinking, like the Startup Story SLAM. We are developing a School of Startup program that will allow entrepreneurs and innovators to learn in hands-on, interactive studio classes. We connect cool people with other cool people and get them to work together. We mentor, advise and share our knowledge, thoughts and ideas.
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May 2012 - MassChallenge Semi-Finalists
Congratulations to 2 South Shore teams who made it to the MassChallenge semi-finals! 30 Hands Learning (formerly iPresentOnline) co-founder Eric Braun met Richard Connolly, founder of iCornerstone at one of the MC2012 networking events. Both teams gave their pitches before a panel of judges last week. The results of who moves on to the finals will be announced at the end of May. From 1,237 entrants, 300 teams were chosen as semi-finalists. The odds of making the first cut were 24%. The next cut will drop the field down to roughly 125 teams, a 41% chance. Good luck!
April 2012 - MassChallenge 2012
Once again, it is time for the MassChallenge. iPresentOnline has entered again with its innovative collaborative, social, student-centric learning studio. Teachers can sign up for free! The K12 community in Massachusetts has been very interested in this way to structure course content from virtually anywhere that can be viewed on any device. Notre Dame Academy in Hingham has completely embraced the technology which is allowing them to flip the classroom and provide a blended learning environment.
March 2012 - South Shore Innovation Series
We are working with the Public Schools of Hanover, MA to bring an Innovation Series to students, entrepreneurs, educators and the general South Shore community. The first event will be on April 30 at the Hanover High School. Check out the full schedule at http://SSInnovation.iPresentOnline.com
May 10, 2011 - MassChallenge 2011
The South Shore is heating up with innovation again this summer. There are several teams from the South Shore entered into the 2nd annual MassChallenge startup event (http://www.masschallenge.org). Included are iPresentOnline, Pivotal Aero and Playbill Express . Let's work together to keep our teams progressing forward.
February 25-27, 2011 - Boston Hack Day Challenge
Boston.com sponsored a Hack Day Challenge at the MassChallenge Fan Pier location. About 150 techies and entrepreneurs came to form teams with the goal of developing an app that would make Boston better. The South Shore Innovation team developed a prototype called "playbill express" to put theatre playbills on the iPad and mobile platform. Scott Kirsner and others tweeted their enthusiasm about the demo.
October 14, 2010 - International Relations
The South Shore Innovation Round Table was host to a delegation of Lebanese entrepreneurs representing a mobile applications company, a gaming company, an engineering/construction company and a consulting firm. Below is a picture of the morning group standing before our favorite entrepreneurial coffee shop, Gunther Tooties:
Fouad, Emilio, Tim, Ihab, Paul, Reine, Aya, Eric, Phyllis, Chris
September 23, 2010 - Quest for Innovation
South Shore Innovation participated in the Quest for Innovation. Our innovation was accumulating more points instead of going to more locations. We are proud to say that we had 50% more points than the winning team :-)
March, 2010 - South Shore Innovation Begins
After 15 years running my Software Services and Consulting company, I decided to get more involved in the startup community in Boston, to uncover new adventures and find out what other entrepreneurs were up to. This led to a whirlwind tour of many events primarily in Cambridge and Boston, reconnecting with old colleagues and making new connections with both young and seasoned entrepreneurs. After running into a few people from the South Shore -- where I was from-- it occurred to me that there were not many innovation and entrepreneurial activities happening in our neck of the woods. This led to creating South Shore Innovation to bring together the innovators and entrepreneurs in the area to share ideas and work together.
Although part of the dream is to have an innovation center where people can come and go and spend time with other innovators, that has not yet been economically feasible. Perhaps, one day! For now, South Shore Innovation is a connected community with the goal of bringing together people who want to collaborate on ideas and work and support entrepreneurship and innovation in a suburban world that is generally more focused on traditional views of getting a specific college degree and working for someone else. We aim to encourage, teach and support people who think experimentation is fun and can be a rewarding career, a career where working for yourself or in a collaborative unstructured environment is more interesting than getting caught in the towers of large corporations.
I also believe from my experiences that large companies that are receptive to changing the way teams work within their environment can be more successful. Agile and evolutionary systems development save costs and generate systems that are better matched to the users' needs.
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