Smaller cities can build ‘innovation corridors’: my remarks at Tech2Gether

Innovation hubs are dense collections of knowledge workers developing new methods for old ways. With like-minded members of the creative class can come community, and the retention that comes when we develop networks where we live.

The web has allowed for a more organic, smaller-scale kind of growth that is developing faster vibrancy in urban ways, but it doesn’t only have to happen in big cities, like how I’ve described in my home Philadelphia. Since launching Technical.ly Delaware, I’ve become really excited by how Wilmington could develop an innovation corridor of its own.

At a recent conference called Tech2Gether on that 70,000-person city’s future, I spoke on that very subject. Following an article I wrote, I called those in attendance to see a Delaware pipeline that could result in a celebrated, healthier urban core of Wilmington.

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Wilmington, Del. needs to develop its innovation corridor [Op-Ed]

The fate of small, urban satellite cities and the role technology and entrepreneurship communities will have in their future is of interest to me. I recently wrote something about it for the Delaware state newspaper.

After this op-ed in the Wilmington News Journal about the innovation economy, Delaware entrepreneur leader Jon Brilliant encouraged me to write something in response. I did so here for Technical.ly Delaware and contributed a shorter version that was published in the News Journal here.

Today, any U.S. community preparing for the future is fostering a technology and entrepreneurship ecosystem. Delaware is too.

A recent News Journal op-ed on the matter didn’t take into account much of an organic, nascent community that is building toward a bigger impact. There are efforts in Newark, Lewes, Rehoboth and elsewhere, Wilmington, despite its challenges, already has the foundation of an innovation corridor. MORE

Read the rest here

Download an image of the paper version [PDF].

5 ways the world will change in five years: Non-Obvious Dinner

How will the world change in the next 5 years? That is the prompt for the annual ‘Non-Obvious Dinner’ organized by Jeff Rollins and Ben duPont, two entrepreneurship leaders whom I’ve come to meet in launching Technical.ly Delaware.

I was among 100 guests invited by the pair to the historic Wilmington Club earlier this month asked to arrive with an answer to that question. First, over dinner, we shared at tables of 10, and we chose the best at our table to present to the entire group, and one was chosen as the most interesting and believable way the world would change in the next five years. (here is another idea from someone who attended last year)

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