John Wensveen With The Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation

Intro: [00:00:01] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in South Florida. It’s time for South Florida Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:13] Lee Kantor here, another episode of South Florida Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Diaz Trade Law, your customs expert today on South Florida Business Radio. We have John Wensveen with the Allan B Levan Center of NSU, Broward Center of Innovation. That’s quite the mouthful, John. Welcome to the show.

John Wensveen: [00:00:38] Hi. Hey, it is quite the mouthful. Thank you. And we can just call the Levan Center to make it easy for you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Thank you. So tell us about the Levan Center. How are you serving folks?

John Wensveen: [00:00:49] So I have the most incredible job in the world. I personally believe I’m the chief innovation officer at Nova Southeastern University, but also executive director of the Allan B Levan and NSU Broward Center of Innovation. And what I’ve been able to do is tie my roles into one and my job and my team’s job is to completely disrupt South Florida as a region around the three themes of innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. And what we’ve done is we’ve actually built the world’s very first theme park for entrepreneurs, and we have figured out how to reverse engineer this, because the success of an entrepreneur, literally from birth of an idea right through successful exit of a company or global expansion. And what we’ve done is we’ve designed and built a 54,000 square foot theme park, which is about the same size of a bed, bath and beyond, just to put it in scope. And within it, we’ve created this amazing infrastructure that allows us to create customized programs and events and wraparound services where we essentially have a giant collision station that for the very first time in our nation and around the world, entrepreneurs are forced to collide with academia, industry, government funders, wraparound service providers, professional networks and a whole lot more. And our real job here is to be an economic development engine for South Florida that has local, regional, national and international impact that ultimately creates new businesses and scales those businesses and make sure that they’re sustainable, which then results in the creation of new industry here in the region, too.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:17] Now, you mentioned that this effort is in disrupting kind of the way things are being done currently. Is there like what was the genesis of the idea and where are you getting your methodology to kind of at least test the water in this manner?

John Wensveen: [00:02:33] Well, it’s really interesting when you look at the trends and challenges around technology. Generally speaking, globally, there are all kinds of trends that are occurring. And what’s happening is you’re seeing more and more creation of what we would call incubators and accelerators, where you incubate ideas and then you accelerate those ideas into commercialized enterprise. And what happened about four years ago, there was a philanthropist here in South Florida, Alan Lavan, that had an amazing conversation with the president of Nova Southeastern University and said, we’re really concerned about the future of talent and really the qualified, skilled talent for the future around the theme of technology. Where are we going to create those skills? How are you going to recruit them and retain them here in our region and to to accelerate? What happened was that conversation then made its way to Broward County. And at that time, the mayor and the commissioners listened to this idea of the possible creation of end quote and Innovation Center that would be located here in Fort Lauderdale. And it was a unanimous decision to move forward in a public private partnership was formed where both NSU, Florida and Broward County came together and financially CO invested into the creation of this concept. And then I was recruited into the position two and a half years ago and really understood what that vision was. And then we grew that into something much bigger, knowing that there are a number of trends and challenges and opportunities that needed immediate strategies, not just locally but in the US and then internationally.

John Wensveen: [00:04:04] And with that said, it was let’s go and figure out what that infrastructure or tool will will look like. So we did a thorough analysis, literally international research, and we found that these incubators and accelerators were what we would call one and done programs where they may have focused on an idea and then the entrepreneur leaves them and then they go off onto their own journey without the support that they required. And we realize that that was a true opportunity for us here in South Florida to, number one, link the whole region collectively so that we act as that gorilla glue that identifies all of the stakeholders and opportunities and required infrastructure that we need to be that economic development engine. And then we built it all under this one roof and we technically opened our doors on April 27th. This last year, a little bit slowed down with the COVID situation where we had to go virtual for our programing and various types of events. But in that short period of time, we were already shown that we’re disrupting the market around the creation of new technologies and a new talent skills pipeline. To support these emerging tech sector opportunities. We’ve created new companies, new jobs. We’re scaling these businesses. So it’s just been phenomenal.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:16] So your mission is to take them not just from an idea to a launch, but to an idea from launch to growth to maybe even post growth to legacy, to come back and then mentor and then kind of repeat the process. So you want to like have the whole life cycle of the entrepreneur at least playing in your theme park?

John Wensveen: [00:05:37] Exactly. I mean, you used the correct word, their life cycle. And there are a lot of pieces of infrastructure throughout the nation that truly focus on small business and help the small business owners and entrepreneurs to launch their business and hopefully sustain their business. But there are very few resources anywhere that really allow that small business to go to the next level. So we provide access opportunities that allow that to happen and truly scale. So we’re focused on not necessarily the small business we’re focused on. Well, how do you create that small business into a national international organization, or how do you create a franchise model out of out of that? You think about things like Kindle as an example that came out of an innovation center. Other things like Uber Eats and Lyft and and and things like that all came out of innovation centers. So how do we create that next Amazon, if you will?

Lee Kantor: [00:06:29] Now, one of the advantages, like a Silicon Valley has they have a density of entrepreneurs and the density of startups happening so that invariably as they fail, which a lot of them will fail, there’s a place for the the entrepreneur to land and maybe do a mash up with somebody else who has something interesting going on. How are you addressing kind of some of that or a way to jumpstart some of that density so that the entrepreneur doesn’t take one shot and fails and then just says, well, maybe I gotta get a real job.

John Wensveen: [00:07:03] Mm hmm. Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned Silicon Valley, because sometimes in recent times, we’re finding that we’re now being called the Silicon Valley of the East. And I and my feathers go up whenever I hear that, because we are not and nor should we ever be. So Florida is a very unique region. And it’s interesting when you look at Miami-Dade County, Broward County, Palm Beach County, everybody has a very similar agenda. And one of those agenda items is to become a designated technology hub, just like Silicon Valley did. And when you look at national rankings across the United States, all of the cities that are ranked as a technology hub are actually ranked as cities, with the exception of the Silicon Valley area. So that whole Greater San Francisco area is one region that’s defined rather than just a city. And the other area here in South Florida is the track that we’re on is that this whole region will become a defined technology hub. And Silicon Valley, you’re absolutely correct. They have all of this infrastructure, they have density, and it’s very unique and they have an entire ecosystem. But what’s also interesting is a lot of trends are now showing there’s an exodus out of Silicon Valley and that infrastructure is actually starting to break up and in the future is a little bit different than the path that we’ve historically been on. So what we’re doing is we’re certainly adapting from some of the successes of Silicon Valley, and then we’re creating those opportunities here in South Florida, but also recognizing that we have to create our own set of parameters because we’re a completely different region than anywhere else in the country, even county by county, by county. But it’s on its way. And a lot of that Silicon Valley talent and knowledge and resources is now flowing right here into South Florida. That exodus is moving in this direction.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:39] Now, are there going to be some specialties that that you’re targeting, that, you know, some niches that you’re saying, okay, we want to be best in class in, you know, A, B and C? Are there some areas of technology or business that you want to be the go to place for that to occur?

John Wensveen: [00:08:59] Yes, absolutely. So I would say that we’re planting a number of flags that are really reinventing what we do here in our own region. So originally when we started with this concept, we were going to be focused on what we call the defined targeted industries in South Florida, really the high wage, high growth sectors. And then as we began to get more involved in what we were doing, we realized that we should move away from targeted industries and really focus on what we call digital economies or economies of the future. And with that, we realized that technology is the underpin. That’s what’s linking all of this together. So in terms of focusing on specific industries, we’re not we’re really focused on technology because technology supports every industry and will only do so more as we move into the future. So the flags that we’re planting are around things like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, spatial computing, which most people are not familiar with. And there’s an amazing opportunity there. And then another interesting thing that we’ve done is we realized that South Florida is completely disconnected from the space sector, but there are so many businesses here in existence and future businesses that with a slight pivot, they can support. Court space, and we found that the opportunities to enter space, the barriers are coming down because of the privatization and commercialization, and there’s more of a need for the small entrepreneur to support that sector. So that’s one of our unique specialties. And in fact, on October the 12th, we’re launching the very, very first South Florida Space Day, and it will be a collision station bringing those stakeholders together through the South Florida region, but also the state of Florida, where we have partners here like Nassau and Space Florida and the Space Foundation, who’s a very strong collaborative partner with us, to create that awareness and show what those opportunities are.

John Wensveen: [00:10:48] And then again, mix the private and public sectors together so that we could actually move forward and that space slide right here. And then the other one that we’re planting is cybersecurity. And this is a huge one. Cybersecurity is probably the most important piece of technology that we can talk about right now. And if you ask a sea level executive what keeps you up at night, they usually say there’s two things. One, it’s cybersecurity. Is my infrastructure safe, and the other is around talent. And how do I find that skill, talent to support my industry? And what we recently did is we opened up a military grade cybersecurity range. And I would like to say that it is the most powerful resource of its kind in the southeast region of the United States that allows NSU to create new programs around cybersecurity to fulfill those talent needs, but also to work with other academic partners, industry and government at all different levels from from a training perspective at the entry mid and advanced levels, but also to allow you to simulate real life scenarios so that you can be reactive and proactive within your own industry environment.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:48] Now, you mentioned this kind of partnership, public, private. Obviously, you’re housed at a university. Is there an opportunity for businesses to kind of partner with NDSU maybe and say, okay, you know what, we don’t have enough cybersecurity folks. So can we help you develop a curriculum or some classes that will help educate your students in this and then give them kind of a direct pipeline to us or other companies like us to further their career?

John Wensveen: [00:12:21] You’re absolutely speaking my language. And sometimes people will look at me and say, What is this guy talking about? When I tell you? What I’m about to say is that there’s a huge disconnect between academia, whether it’s a public institution or a private institution and industry. And for years, the academic world has dictated to industry what they think their needs are. And then industry is turning around and saying, that’s not correct, or our needs are X, Y and Z. So infrastructure, like the pieces that we are building, allow us to be the bridge that connects the academic worlds with the worlds of industry and government as examples. And then we can find out what is it that industry truly needs. So in this particular case, that’s a cybersecurity expert, but I’m not getting the right knowledge and skills or personality out of these academic programs. We then create opportunities for industry and academia to co-invest with one another so an industry partner could come to us and say, Here’s our need short, medium and long term, how can you help us? And then we as an institution and as an innovation center, they can say, okay, we’ll co-develop that curriculum.

John Wensveen: [00:13:27] You invest into the infrastructure with us and then we’ll create those pipelines that you so desperately need. And we make these long term co-investing strategic partnerships where we’re not just sitting around a table having a coffee and a bagel, we’re actually walking and talking collectively together. And that’s a it sounds like it’s an easy formula for some of the challenges that we have in the world and reality. It is we just need to do a better job all over the world to make sure that industry and academia are coming together as one. And if you look at the data, academic institutions globally are actually decreasing. So every day there’s there’s an institution closing its doors while the corporations are now developing their own training, their own universities in-house to create the talent and the skills that they require if they can’t get it from from other means. So there’s a huge transition occurring in this world right now. And I think you’re going to see more co-investors, strategic partnerships, where we we collectively think as one rather than not being on parallel paths with each other.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:26] Now, are you seeing any trends regarding at least the mindset of entrepreneurship amongst young people? Is are they kind of at least changing their thinking from I’m going to get a job to I’m going to bet on myself.

John Wensveen: [00:14:44] So if you ask me that question 2 to 2 and a half years ago, my answers would be a little bit different than they are today. And I think that the the COVID global pandemic has really altered the pathways that a lot of young people are on. Their way of thinking and doing has changed. And some will say it’s just the fat and others will say that this is the way of the world moving forward. And what we have found with this whole, quote, great resignation is that just the attitude and perspective of people, generally speaking, has changed where they have increased demands in terms of what they want with their day to day lifestyle, how they work, how they think, how they do, if you will. And I think there are some cons that have come with that. And but the pros is that people are learning to reinvent themselves. So we go through these phases of survive, adapt, recover, and now we’re in that rethink mode. And it’s entrepreneurs at all levels from from young minds trying to do something with creating a business to to more established entrepreneurs that have been successful or not successful throughout their own journey. And what we’re finding is that the COVID situation created new business opportunities and most of those being virtually accessible. So there are new types of businesses, new types of industries, new types of economies requiring new types of mindsets and skills that we would probably have never addressed if the pandemic never did not occur.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:06] Now, is there an effort to maybe educate younger and younger people about this entrepreneurship mindset? Because to me, that’s almost a must have that you have to you have to change the way you’re thinking, even if you’re going to get a real job in terms of working in an enterprise. If you could think of your boss as your client, it changes how you behave and it changes how you think. Are you seeing any of that happening where that kind of mindset training or at least opening their mind to that type of thinking is trickling down through college, through high school, through even middle school and elementary school.

John Wensveen: [00:16:48] Elaine I think it’s an international impact that’s starting to happen, and I think that some regions of the world are probably further ahead than we are here in in North America, where a mindset is something that you have to educate and create awareness about. And there’s always been this belief that in order to be an entrepreneur, you have to be born with it in your blood. You just can’t become an entrepreneur. You’re born with it. And I completely disagree with that. I don’t think a lot of people even understand what entrepreneurship is. So that so what we’re doing specifically with the lab and center of innovation is we actually have programing around seminars and workshops and eventually certifications. And as part of what we call our Founder’s Journey program, which are very complex, very categorized multi week programs, the innovation mindset is introduced and we start with, well, what is innovation? It’s, it’s a word that people use all the time, but they don’t necessarily understand what it means and that anybody virtually can be an entrepreneur, even if they don’t think so. But it’s part of our mission is to be able to educate and explain what that is and show what that pathway looks like. Even if you’re an employee in corporate America, you still are an entrepreneur in many cases and only refer to that as entrepreneurship. So how do you build companies from from within? So everybody that crosses my path, I look at them as you’re an innovator, you’re a disruptor, you’re an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur. But there is a way to to educate. And the global trends are showing that more and more of this innovation mindset and entrepreneurial mindset is being embedded into curriculum and more hands on experience and exposure to networks that maybe you didn’t have access to before.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:24] Now, what about the underserved folks that aren’t maybe, maybe aren’t there aren’t as many numbers of them in maybe the engineering schools, the technology innovation area, or there an effort, an outreach for them to at least learn or get a taste of this. So then that might alter their not only their career path or their future, but also their family and their community.

John Wensveen: [00:18:51] Absolutely. I think the key word there is accessibility. And many of these underserved zip codes and demographics simply don’t have awareness or maybe they don’t even have the technology to be able to learn about certain things. So if you look in South Florida about the percentage of people that don’t even have access to the Internet, it would blow your mind where everybody just assumes that you are from a technology perspective, can access anything you want. And the reality is that’s not true. So what we do with our own programing is we actually work with different types of organizations in the public and private sectors to to go into those communities and bring those communities to us. But we’re taking that even a step further. We recently received a a federal grant where we will now build an innovation center on wheels. So imagine bringing your innovation center into those underserved communities, but also creating bridges of opportunity to bring them to you. So as part of our outreach, we will be going into the South Florida region, to the underserved areas, to the underserved demographics, to increase accessibility in terms of opportunity. And some of the best entrepreneurs in this world come from from those types of zones or demographics. And our job is to find them and figure out how we can accelerate their success.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:08] Yeah, I think there’s a tremendous opportunity there because there are such consumers of technology, but they’re not creators of it. And there has to be a path for them to to be the creators and that kind of next generation of entrepreneur.

John Wensveen: [00:20:22] Absolutely. And I think that one of the things that we sometimes ignore is what the life cycle of that entrepreneur looks like. So let’s start at the very beginning. How do you get to those young children so that they understand that there’s a pathway? And I’m a firm believer in using a baseball diamond as an analogy that most types of programs out there look at the baseball diamond, and if you can get the batter to first base, then that’s success. And then hopefully they get to second and eventually cross home. We look at things a little bit differently, so we measure success of an individual right from the very beginning before they do anything. So they’re batting at the home plate and we figure out how do we get you to third base first, then second, then first, and then ultimately to where you started. And by doing that, we create a very strategic map, if you will, that also allows like a highway. And we what we do is we provide off ramps or exits so that if you come into a challenge while there’s an off ramp, it allows you to get back on that on that highway. And that’s a model that’s never been completely perfected. And we’re going to do our best to make sure that we can.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:26] So you’re kind of keeping the end in mind and reverse engineering to to the beginning?

John Wensveen: [00:21:33] Absolutely. And we’ve already got a number of examples where we’ve actually steered some people back onto that pathway. And there’s some really interesting successes coming out of the Levant center of innovation right now and NDSU as a as an institution. And it’s changed people’s. Lives right down to faculty within academic disciplines. A lot of faculty, they may concentrate on research or writing a white paper or going to a conference, not even recognizing that the research that they’re doing can actually be commercialized. So we’re developing that programing infrastructure too, so that they have more of an innovative mindset and can think more like an entrepreneur so they can actually commercialize on that research.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:08] So what do you need more of? How can we help?

John Wensveen: [00:22:12] Oh, we need a lot of things. So I think the thing that we probably need the most help with is just simply awareness. How do we let the world know that this incredible resource exists right here in South Florida? And the best way to do that is to truly invite people to come and see it. So you can see videos and you can see pictures and you can hear about things. But when you come here, you truly do walk into that theme park atmosphere. And I would say that 99% of all individuals that come through when they get to the last space on a on an official tour, say, oh, my gosh, wow, you’ve thought about everything. How do I get involved? And there’s something for everybody. It’s not just the entrepreneur, it’s the entire ecosystem that makes that entrepreneur successful. So how do we do more outreach to find those entrepreneurs, and particularly at the early stage, how do we find those investors? And from all the different angles that exist out there, from the angel investors to the venture capitalists, how do we find those professional and social networks that we can embed in here? And how do we find more mentors and program facilitators that are looking to give back to that community to to make individuals successful? But it’s really awareness at the end of the day.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:18] So if somebody wants to learn more about Space Day or Innovation Day or anything about the Lavon Center as their website, what’s the best way to to learn more or get a hold of you or somebody on your team?

John Wensveen: [00:23:30] Sure. So the best way to get a hold of us is to go to our website and it’s Nova and Nova edu is slash innovation and I’m all over LinkedIn. That’s my big social media platform. And I encourage people to to send a link to me and we’ll connect and, and I’ll get my team involved. And October the 12th is the very first South Florida space dates and all day event bringing in the space world here. And then October 26th is the very first South Florida Innovation Day, where we’re bringing the whole innovation community and South Florida together. And that is a partnership with Emerge Americas, which is a very substantial event that takes place every April in Miami. And they’re a great partner to help promote and support us with that particular event on October 26.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:14] Well, congratulations on all the success, John. You’re doing important work, and we appreciate you.

John Wensveen: [00:24:20] Well, thank you, Lee. I appreciate you as well. And thank you for helping spread our message.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:24] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll be back in a few at South Florida Business Radio.