Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Harvard iLabs' Jones wants to drive student innovation

By James M. Connolly

The director of Harvard University’s Innovation Lab — known as iLab — says a key to helping student entrepreneurs succeed, and to keeping them in the Boston area, is to germinate their innovative ideas earlier in their time at Harvard.

Gordon Jones, who was named director of the new program in April,  addressed 100 entrepreneurs Tuesday night during a Grillside Chat organized by Mass High Tech and hosted by law firm WilmerHale at its Waltham office.

“We have to support students with for-profit interests to incubate them from start toward commercialization scale, as well as students who may have not-for-profit interests. To me a home run is if we can start germinating student interest in entrepreneurship earlier, so that they can flower that much earlier whenever that entrepreneurship realization coming out is for them,” said Jones. “For that population that is going to start a business right away, we certainly want to germinate it early. We are bringing courses into the innovation lab that will be taught as entrepreneurship for undergrads. Things that have not historically fit within Harvard university.”

Jones was interviewed by Mass High Tech publisher E. Douglas Banks and discussed topics such as his background, the goals for the lab and the lab’s role within the innovation community.

That lab, scheduled to open this year, will be housed in the former home of WGBH on Western Ave. in Allston. The lab will occupy 30,000 square feet of space, including classrooms, conference rooms, offices and 5,000 square feet of open space that will support not only informal meetings but community events, such as startup bootcamps.

Jones has worked in large consumer products companies, including Gillette, in his own startup, and as an educator and venture capitalist.

“I have 15 years from a functional standpoint in sales and marketing as a background. I think of myself as part intrapreneur, part entrepreneur and part education. If you think about the intersection of where those three things meet, you’ve got the iLab and what Harvard is doing,” said Jones. He said a key aspect to the iLab model is that it will work with the diverse departments and schools within Harvard, in effect providing entrepreneurs, whether they are students or alumni, what amounts to a home within the university.

He acknowledged that Harvard didn’t invent the iLab concept. “We are in some ways chasing certain initiatives that other schools have put out there, whether it is MIT or Stanford or Carnegie Mellon. I think the distinctive thing about them relative to Harvard is where the center of gravity exists in those schools.  With them, it’s engineering. With Harvard, you have a more liberal arts centric school. To me, Harvard is recognizing the need, institutionally, to step forward in a cross university way to support the student  populations who is interested in entrepreneurship and innovation.”  

Jones said that in addition to providing community space and entrepreneurship classes the iLab will focus on establishing links with the community. Those links could include working with small businesses in the local area, as well as exposing students to experts and resources from the community, including investors, lawyers, marketers and product design firms.

Asked about which industries the iLab will emphasize, he said the school has decided to be agnostic to start, but that he expects much of the startup work to be in areas such as social media, mobile applications and non-profit initiatives. He also noted that he expects iLab branches to show up around the world in other countries where Harvard has a presence.

Addressing the issue of Boston-area college students taking their startup ideas to other regions, Jones observed that some of those entrepreneurs developed their business ideas late in their college careers when “they already are ready to fly the coop”. He said that by encouraging entrepreneurship among undergraduates and supporting those ideas there is a greater chance that students will keep their businesses in the Boston area after graduation.