1Interview and transcription July 28, 2009

Saul Kaplan, Founder and Chief Catalyst, Business Innovation Factory, Providence,Rhode IslandA Community of Innovators Transforming Systems in Health Care, Education &EnergyA. CATEGORY – Open Source Economic Development

What are you passionate about now?2.

What would you like people to know, think, feel and do?3.

What do you see for the future?

INTRODUCTION

Hi, my name is Saul Kaplan. I am the Founder and Chief Catalyst of the BusinessInnovation Factory, or as we like to call it, BIF. It’s great if you ever get the opportunityto create your own title, which I got to do here since I founded the organization. I callmyself the Chief Catalyst, I remember back to my high school days, to high schoolchemistry, where I learned that a catalyst was a re-agent that got the reaction going, butthen got out of the way once it was going. I also remember it never got used up in thereaction, and I liked that part. We’re trying to catalyze a real world laboratory to mobilizesystems level change in health care, education, and in the energy space. All three of thesethings are systems level problems. They are well-intentioned systems, and sometimes Icall them rugby scrums where all the players are battling and protecting their intereststrying to improve their competitive position, but change is very, very difficult, as we allknow in these environments. I believe that what we need to do is learn how to do is R&Dfor new models in systems. Where are we going to explore a better way to deliver valueto the patient in health care, to the student in education, or to the citizen in the energyspace? Here at BIF we’re creating a community of innovators around the country that arenetworked together and we’re trying to make those networks purposeful in those areasthat we focus on by creating real world labs where you can experiment with newsolutions. Some specific examples: we have a patient focus lab called, “The NursingHome of the Future”. We’re trying to rethink and re-envision the elder experience. Thesystem we have in place in this country that cares for our elders is exploding at the seams

2and that’s before the first baby boomer even hits the sixty-five year-old scene in the year 2011. There’s got to be a better way, there’s got to be a better system where elders canage at home where they want to age with dignity and have a physical environment and aset of care elements of a system that are able to deliver better care for less money. Wewant to take that theory and put it on a real world test bed to determine what works, learnfrom what works and to learn from each other. We’ve got a very similar lab in theeducation space called, “The Student Experience Lab” where we just got a grant tounderstand the college student’s experience through the lens of the student. So many of these conversations are institutional leaders that get together to debate amongstthemselves how the system needs to change. There’s no voice of the student in theseinnovation conversations and we try to bring that voice into the conversation and thencreate an environment where we can think about better ways to deliver value to thestudent that might cut across the public and private sector, might cut across silos, andforce us to collaborate in a new and different way. So, really what we’re trying to do is tomobilize systems change in areas that are really important to all of us regardless of whether we sit in the public sector or in the private sector and we’re trying to create anactionable platform where we can take ideas from the whiteboard and move them on tothe ground.[00:03:45]My passion is R&D for new business models in systems. I don’t think tweaking thesystems we have in this country are going to create a kind of country we all want to livein, create a positive future for our children and for our grand children. So, I think we haveto get below the buzz words of innovation and we have to start rolling up our sleeves anddemonstrating that all of this great technology that we have available to us today, canactually be put to good use to solve the problems that we struggle with every single day.We don’t want to sit around the table and talk about it, we want to roll up our sleeves andtry to do something about that. I’m very encouraged today about the opportunity. I think there’s a window of opportunity right now that all of us can take advantage of and I believe that this statement of “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste” is true. This is our time. This is the innovators day.One of the things that encourages me the most is the next generation, the millennials or the “Y” generation give me great hope for the future. I know I have three millennials inour family. They are wired to connect, they are wired to collaborate, they have a veryhealthy distrust of institutions and how slow institutions are to deal with the problemswe’re stalled with, and they have no patience. In my era, the only thing you could do isyou could get a picket sign and go out and protest. Now the millennials are mobilizing,they’re self organizing, they’re connecting with each other and they’re not waiting for institutions to move towards some of the new system changes that we all want. That’s avery, very positive sign and I think it bodes well for the future. I think most largeinstitutions, public or private, could learn a lot by watching how the millennial generation processes and shares information, how they collaborate, and how they work together witha common purpose to get more stuff done. I think we just have to just get more stuff doneand experiment more than we do today.

What value do you see Open Source practices offering to innovation in a networkedworld?

[00:05:54] Open Source is a really important idea and I think we’re just learning how totake advantage of this idea. Too many of us are dinosaurs, I know I am, I grew up in ahierarchical world where you were in an organization with functions where you knowexactly where you were in the pecking order. Everything you did was systematic: you didthis, then you did this, then you did this. Today we look at a network world. Everythingconnects to everything else and communication happens in an entirely different way thanthe way I was wired as a dinosaur. We have to learn new tricks and we have to hurry upand help the millennials provide the impetus for us to make the changes that we need tomake. But there is no question that this idea that “I have the best idea, therefore youshould follow me and you should do what I say the way I say it, is very old thinking. New thinking is, one of our advisors here at BIF, Roger Martin, says that the way youdefine an innovator as somebody who knows they have a strong point of view, they’reconfident enough to put their point of view out, but they know that they’re missingsomething. They know they’re missing something and they’re on a mission to find thatmissing thing and the only way they’re going to find it is by exploring across silos andthe grey area between silos to find the thing that’s gong to make their idea better andmore likely to happen. That thinking leads you to open source, it leads you to put your ideas out on social media platforms and welcome additions and changes to your ideas. Itmeans you’re going to find and connect to people who can help you to implement whatyou’re trying to implement and you’re not going to wait for institutions and the rigiditywithin institutions to constrain you, you’re going to connect with them using technologyto enable you to do that. I still think it’s early days, you know we see all the examples inthe software world that work, where we all know and love Wikipedia, and see thoseexamples, but when you start to apply that in the physical development domain, in thecapability in large organization or system domain, they haven’t figured out quite yet howto apply it, but we will, but we will. You can see social media platforms just coming intotheir own and enabling people to self organize and to share and exchange ideas. The nextthing we have to do is we have to make the platforms actionable. I often say we have tomake the networks purposeful, that we have to harness all of this energy on these socialmedia platforms not just to talk about and exchange ideas, but to roll up their sleeves andstart to work on things that can improve some of these important systems that we’reworking on.

B. TOPIC - Innovation Framework

What category of the Innovation Framework do you primarily invest your time andattention? Brainpower? Networks? Quality, Connected Place? Dialogue andInclusion? Or Branding Stories?2.

What secondary categories are you interested in?3.

Which category would you like to collaborate with next?[00:08:58] So, to get below the buzz words of open innovation and to actually put it into practice in the real world, there are three areas that I think you really have to focus on and