What You Missed On The Vector Episode 2: “The Value of Innovation Ecosystems”

Written by: Morsiell Dormu

In this episode of The Vector, host Kelli Kedis Ogborn explores the critical role of innovation ecosystems in empowering entrepreneurs, alongside guest Dr. John Wensveen, Chief Innovation Officer at Nova Southeastern University and Executive Director of the Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation.** Together, they unpack how collaboration, strategic infrastructure, and breaking traditional silos are key to driving the future of innovation—both on Earth and in space.

Key Highlights:

Building a Theme Park for Entrepreneurs:

From Vision to Reality: Dr. Wensveen shares the bold vision behind the Levan Center: transforming 54,000 square feet of concrete into the world’s first “theme park” for entrepreneurs, complete with resources to support founders from ideation to exit. Designed during the pandemic, the center now serves as a one-stop innovation hub attracting regional, national, and global interest.

The Entrepreneurial Rides: Like rides in a theme park, the center includes:

• A military-grade cybersecurity range.
• A fully equipped media studio for pitches and content creation.
• A makerspace with 3D printers, robotics, and drones.
• A supercomputer and high-speed FLR connection for advanced data analysis.
• An upcoming AI lab and digital cities simulation lab.
• A volumetric capture studio for spatial computing and digital holograms.
• Florida’s only official investor pitch room, designed to enhance funding success.

Innovation Without Borders:

The Power of Collaboration: Dr. Wensveen argues that innovation hubs shouldn’t compete—they should complement each other. His model brings together academia, industry, government, investors, and wraparound services to create collisions that spark growth.

Global Partnerships: The Levan Center’s innovative “country desk” model allows nations like the Cayman Islands to set up a physical presence and exchange talent, ideas, and investment with the South Florida ecosystem.

Innovation Over Tech-Hub Labels: Rather than compete with Silicon Valley, Wensveen emphasizes building localized innovation identities, noting that every region has its own secret recipe—copying another won’t work.

Shifting the Culture of Innovation:

No More Silos: Both Kelli and John agree—technology is every industry. The future belongs to cross-disciplinary collaboration, not isolated innovation. For example:

• AI + biotech.
• Maritime + space applications.
• Finance + blockchain + space timestamping.

Creating Ecosystems That Embrace Everyone: The Levan Center is intentionally inclusive designed for new founders, established companies, and young minds, giving all access to the space and innovation economy.

Space as a Universal Platform:

Finding Your Place in Space: With Space Foundation and the Levan Center launching Level Five: Space Dock, the episode emphasizes that every company—even if they don’t know it yet—has a place in the future space economy.

Examples from the Field:

• A food tech company realized its innovation had applications for space agriculture.
• Coral reef restoration programs leveraged satellite data to enhance environmental impact.
• A 12-year-old AI developer in the Caymans was connected to the global space ecosystem through Levan’s outreach.

95% of Space ROI Comes from Earth-Based Applications: Space is not just launch and satellites. It’s apps, GPS, weather, logistics, agriculture, and more. As Kelli says, “If you’re an app developer or financial institution—you already are in the space economy.”

Final Thought:

As Dr. Wensveen reminds us, find your innovation center, and you’ll find your tribe. Whether you’re a startup with a big idea, a thriving company ready to pivot into space, or a 12-year-old with AI dreams, the future is waiting—and collaboration is the key to unlocking it.

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Transcript:

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Hello, I’m Kelli Kedis Ogborn, Vice President of Space Commerce and Entrepreneurship at Space Foundation. And welcome to the Vector where we discuss topics and trends driving the global space ecosystem. Today I am so, so excited to be joined by Dr. John Wensveen, who is Chief Innovation Officer at Nova Southeastern University and executive director of the Allen b Lavan, NSU Broward Center of Innovation, where he is responsible for overseeing a multimillion-dollar public-private partnership to support the growing entrepreneurial ecosystem in Broward County and South Florida. John is also the official advisor to the mayor of Broward County on innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. He’s an official member of the Forbes Technology Council and a TEDx speaker. His higher education experience includes faculty and senior leadership positions at Miami-Dade College, Purdue University, Dowling College, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Beyond that experience, he has held many senior leadership positions at Mango Aviation Partners, rads International Airline Visions Inter Vistas, Marriott Vacation Club International, max Jett Airways, and Canada 3000 Airlines. He has a master’s and PhD degree in International Air Transport and business from Cardiff University in the United Kingdom and a Bachelor of Arts in Geography and Transportation land use planning from the University of Victoria in Canada. John, thank you so, so much for being on today.

John Wensveen:

Thank you. I appreciate the great introduction. I got to shorten that bio. That was the shortened version.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Okay, well, I’m so happy to have you on because clearly you have worn many hats, done many things, and especially today when we’re talking about thriving innovation ecosystems, how to create them, how to grow them, and how to sustain them. And I’ve had the fortunate pleasure to work with you at the Lavan Center and we’ll get into those initiatives later, but you guys have just had such tremendous growth in your infancy years, which truly you are still part of. And so I’d love to really start the conversation there about talking about the Lavan Center, a little bit about what it is, but more so how you’ve been able to really enable this massive following and reach beyond Broward County for all of the different innovations areas that you serve.

John Wensveen:

Well, I think the easiest thing to do is to start with a little bit of history. So it was actually three years ago this last week that I’ve been in my new role with dual titles and what led up to the creation of that role before I was ever involved was an emerging trend that’s been occurring in South Florida as a region and in South Florida for the listening audience represents Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach as the three big cities. And then they’re tied together, but they’re not necessarily linked together collaboratively. And you’ve got these geographic boundaries that really extend throughout the Tri-County area. Each of the counties has its own agenda and there’s a common agenda where each wants to be a tech hub and some will debate. They already are a tech hub and that’s how it’s marketed and branded. And I will debate that there’s no such thing as a tech hub in South Florida, but there is an emerging innovation hub that’s being created within the region and a lot of those pieces of the puzzle don’t necessarily connect with each other.

But over the last three years and in particular the last year, those pieces of the puzzle have actually started to come together mainly as a result of the Levan Center of Innovation that has been created and its brand new. So the premise behind the Levan Center originally started with a philanthropist specific to the greater Fort Lauderdale area that was very concerned about the future and said, I’m really worried about tech talent and are we going to be able to start technology companies and recruit technology companies specifically to the Fort Lauderdale area in the future if we don’t have the right qualified skilled talent to be able to support that. Which then led to a conversation with the president of Nova Southeastern University, and I’ll refer to it as NSU from this point onwards. NSU is the largest private university in the state of Florida. In addition to our main campus in Fort Lauderdale, we have eight regional campuses throughout the state of Florida as well as Puerto Rico and Denver, Colorado.

And we continue to grow and will become even more international in the not too distant future. The president, the philanthropist and then the commissioners and the mayor of Broward County all got together and collectively agreed that a public-private partnership really did need to be formed in Broward County where Fort Lauderdale resides with the idea that some kind of an economic and education development engine should be created to really help grow new businesses specific to technology. And then I was recruited into the role and I listened to the original vision and it was good, but it was relatively small in terms of geographic scope. And what I recognized is that this was way beyond Fort Lauderdale and Broward County. This was a regional effort that needed a resource that could link the region together and truly break down the barriers that exist in the Tri-County area from Miami to Fort Lateral to Palm Beach, and not only have local impact, but regional, national and international impact at the same time.

So I was given an amazing privilege and opportunity to be shown 54,000 square feet of concrete. It was just a blank concrete field and never will this ever happen again, is my guess. Somebody said, what are you going to do with this? So I put up my hand and I said, we’re going to build the world’s first theme park for entrepreneurs. And that captured a lot of attention and raised a lot of eyebrows. And the concept was how do we support entrepreneurs in our community so that they can accelerate their success and be able to sustain that success? So what we ended up doing was designing truly a theme park concept where we figured out how to reverse engineer the success of an entrepreneur from birth of an idea, right through successful exit of a company, or maybe it was a global expansion opportunity that they were looking for and figured out what does that infrastructure network look like?

What kind of resources are required for an entrepreneur to be successful and what does that look like around the world? And then how do we take all of those pieces and when we say reverse engineer, bring the world in to this 54,000 square foot purpose-built space that really acts as a shopping mall, if you will, a one stop shop that has storefronts and every one of those storefronts or rides has some kind of return for that entrepreneur, and not just the entrepreneur, but those that make them successful. So imagine a collision station where entrepreneurs for the very first time are forced to collide with academia, industry, government, the investment community, professional networks, wraparound service providers and more. And then take that to another level where we work and form official agreements with innovative nations from all over the world that physically have a presence. So they have an ambassador, if you will, or a desk and a chair in this amazing innovation center where the Lavan Center now becomes a gateway or a portal to all of the infrastructure and networks and resources that an entrepreneur requires at any stage from what we call idea eight, to incubate, to accelerate or post accelerate, which is the founder’s journey from start to finish and then have access where we can import and export to these innovative nations, the entrepreneurs, the investors, the networks and the service providers.

And we officially built out over the period of a global pandemic, and I’m happy to say that we did do it on time and on budget in a time when nobody was knowing what they should do, how they should spend their money, how do you find contractors, how do you find customers, how do you develop partnerships and then do so virtually because you’re forced to do so. But we were able to launch a number of virtual program opportunities until we were able to open in person. And then April the 27th of this year, we did our official grand opening and truly went into full scale business, which is where we are right now. And there’s been some remarkable data and successes and metrics that have now been collected in terms of our impact, again, not just locally, but regionally, nationally and internationally.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, I’ve said this to you before, but I definitely applaud you on the rocket success, pun intended from the Space Foundation, but you have such a lean staff, right? I mean, and you guys accomplish tremendous things. And what I think is really fascinating is the business model that you impart because instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, you very much make it a collaborative environment and a centralized hub for the best and the brightest and whoever wants to come and join the mission, which really has allowed you to service a lot of different types of tech subsets because you bring in everyone and have had tremendous success in it. And I told you that when I had the privilege of viewing the center for the first time in May, I really didn’t know what to expect and I arrived and it truly was mind blowing because of the facilities that you have, not only to discuss the tech and learn about the tech, but to get hands-on work experience in it. So can you talk a little bit about the stations, because that’s what I found so fascinating because you really have something for everyone in terms of tech maturation and what people need to accomplish.

John Wensveen:

Yeah, so it is funny as we’ve built this out, I treat it as a business even though it’s nonprofit and we put together an extremely talented skilled team and we’ve kept it very small and everybody that has been hired onto our team in essence is an entrepreneur

Intrapreneur to help build out this business. So we’re a scrappy startup helping startups, and when we compare ourselves to other similar types of models around the world, we recognize that there isn’t anything that’s similar to what we do. So this idea of a world’s first theme park for entrepreneurs is really getting a lot of attraction because we’re not just an incubator, we’re not just an accelerator for ideas and scaling of businesses. We’re way more than that. And when you talk about the different stations, it comes back to the rides that go within a theme park. And we have everything from co-working space to dedicated offices and specialized conference rooms that are absolutely loaded with technology. But what really sets us apart are the rollercoasters, if you will, where we have a purpose-built military grade cybersecurity range. It’s the most powerful cyber range in the southeast region of the United States, and part of it is focused on training at the entry, the mid, and the advanced professional levels. The other part of it is, is really focused on applied simulation exercises that will work with industry and government entities of all shapes and sizes to do things like pen testing or personnel assessment or real-life simulation exercises that are truly replicating what you would experience in a real-life cyber-attack is testing your infrastructure. It’s research and development, and eventually it’ll be certified at different levels to work with different three letter government agencies, if you will. Another station that we’ve created is a full-fledged media production studio, which we continue to enhance. And when we looked at models around the world, we realized that entrepreneurs don’t have a place to go to do their investor pitch presentation or perhaps it’s their marketing branding advertisement video or maybe it’s some kind of documentary, the prototype that they’ve created or the podcast or the webcast, the radio interview, the TV interview, whatever it is, we now have that in-house capability that we make accessible to basically anybody that wants to utilize it. Another station which has now completed phase one, and we’re about to go to phase two, is our technology makerspace. And the technology maker space right now is focused on 3D printing and we have a fleet of robots and drones that have different capabilities.

We’ve got some other types of machines in there, and it’s up to entrepreneurs to figure out how to use it. And what’s also interesting is we’re connected to something called the FLR, which is the Florida Lambda rail, and it’s a hundred gig per second fiber optic line that allows you to send data to different stations throughout the world and do things on a fiber line that you couldn’t do in a traditional environment, which is again, if you know how to use it, is an amazing resource. And we also have a supercomputer and the supercomputer combined with that FLR. If somebody knows how to put them together, it’s unlimited opportunities as an entrepreneur. The next stage of that technology makerspace is going to focus on artificial intelligence, and we’re creating two types of labs. One is an artificial intelligence labs focused on digital cities. So people talk about smart cities.

That’s the current trend. We’re going to the next level, which is digital cities. That’s truly where the world is going. And we’ll have the only AI digital cities lab in the southeast region of the country that will allow entrepreneurs and government entities and private sector to come in and master design an entire city from the entire city right down to the sewer pipe installation and test different scenarios around economics, acts of God, different types of products that could be utilized, various types of technologies. It’s just extremely forward thinking. And on regular AI labs, which is going to be generic, meaning there’s certain types of equipment that if you know how to use it, you can apply it into all kinds of environments that makes sense for you. The other station that we have is forthcoming and it’ll be built out in 2023, and it’s a volumetric capture studio. And this is the one that I’m most excited about, especially because of the

And space volumetric is focused or founded on spatial computing and at some point in the not too distant future, we plan to be the very first center of excellence, an actual designation in spatial computing with the idea that we can bring this new technology and emerging technology to the South Florida region, which attracts new entrepreneurs and new business opportunities. But volumetric capture, the best way to explain it is to walk into a purpose-built room that’s surrounded by a 360 degree green screen. And in our case we’ll have 66 cameras that have sensors and you’ll walk into this room just as a regular human being and those cameras and sensors will pick up all of your physical movements right down to your audio if you wish. And then we collect that data. And the easiest way to explain it is it goes through a piece of equipment that spits you out on the other end as a digital hologram.

And then I can take your digital hologram and superimpose you into any environment that you could ever dream up. So if we want to be on Mars, I can put you on Mars and you’ll look around as if you are on Mars and you can bring in different types of simulated scenarios. It’s truly the future of filmmaking as an example is the future boardroom is the future operating room. It’s your future Broadway play. It can be even your future partner if you wanted a digital partner. I mean, it’s crazy what you can do with this kind of stuff. It just takes time and money to do it. But I see a huge space application forthcoming with that. And then we have various other stations throughout. And one of the other areas that I’m really excited about is we have the only official pitch room in the state of Florida, meaning that an entrepreneur, by the time they go through all the rides, their goal is to get to that pitch space where they are sitting in front of investors or coaches or facilitators or mentors or customers or international government leaders where they’re pitching their ideas and closing deals in that room.

It’s made with the psyche of the entrepreneur in mind, and we can already prove that it actually leads in successful outcomes. So that’s the windshield tour. There’s a lot more behind it from a commercial kitchen to a digital grab and go cafe to other types of unique meeting spaces and huddle pods and whatnot. But it’s extremely innovative in its own right and definitely a leader that’s now catching a lot of attention and others wanting to replicate but don’t really know how to do it.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, there’s always that secret sauce. That’s why we’re not showing your whiteboard, move that aside. No, but I love narratively how you wove that together because independently, if you would talk about those separate rides, people would think, oh, this is vertically integrated with this type of technology, but really we live in this society and this reality where really two things are true. I personally believe that no innovation technology is completely siloed. Everything now has integration to other applications or other markets. So you have to be able to look across the playing field of all innovation and take advantage of opportunities. And the other aspect of it is that entrepreneurship and incubators and accelerators are kind of becoming a buzzword, right? Everybody has ’em. And I loved the point that you made earlier that tech hubs really aren’t a thing that you need to look about how to regionally link innovation capabilities to create the future that we all want because it’s all ubiquitous.

So what are your thoughts on that aspect in terms of creating the right kind of cultures? Because what I’ve seen in these innovation ecosystems is it’s very much competitive, but it needs to be collaborative to be successful because people often interact in these silos and say, okay, I only want to focus on helping AI entrepreneurs. I only want to focus on biotech and med tech. But those are intrinsically linked in a lot of different ways. And so I’d love to get your thoughts on that cultural aspect about how do we think about innovation and partnerships so that we make sure that we’re building the future together.

John Wensveen:

So it’s interesting, that’s a panel discussion in its own right that can take all day and it can be quite controversial in anyone that knows me, I am a little bit controversial and be disruptive and I’ll take a different angle to things and hopefully that message starts to get out where people begin to inquire and believe in it. And if you look all over the United States and you look all over the world at tech hubs, you’re right, they compete within their own ecosystem, but then they also compete with the global ecosystem. And if you think about what that means in terms of outcomes, at leads to a lot of challenges and not necessarily maximizing all the successes that we could potentially captivate. So when I say South Florida is not a tech hub, I truly believe it and that it has all of the infrastructure that’s moving forward to become an innovation hub.

And I like that better because innovation leads to many things including the creation of new technologies, and then that leads to these new entrepreneurial journeys. So I’d rather be designated an innovation hub because I think it’s much bigger, more expansive. It’s not industry diagnostic, it doesn’t focus on one specific thing like artificial intelligence. It encompasses everything. And people often have blinders on and then you think about just blockchain, I’m doing that, or I’m just doing cryptocurrency, or I’m just doing AI as an example. The problem is that if you’re going to be innovative, you can’t be innovative when you’ve got the blinders on. You have to have one rule. And that’s our motto every day here at the Lavan Center is there are no rules and then an asterisk within legal parameters. Of course we’ve added that, but all of these technologies, the emerging technologies that we know of today and those that we’re not even aware of yet, they’re all coming together and they all support one another.

So when somebody says technology is an industry, I will totally disagree with that because technology is every industry and there isn’t anything that it doesn’t touch. And I believe that you have to take the blinders off. You have to get rid of this competitive focus. And my personal perspective is that if an incubator or an accelerator or a model that does both opens up directly across the street from me, that’s amazing because it only builds that innovation ecosystem to the next level. And you can collaborate by pipelining opportunities to one another. A great example is I just came back from the Cayman Islands this last week where we actually signed our very first country desk model where we now have an innovative nation physically connected to the Lavan Center and somebody go, well, why would a little island like that be connected to the Lavan Center?

And they have their own incubator accelerator program there. It’s called Launch Labs, and they’re spawning entrepreneurs out of the Cayman Islands where people come from all over the world to Grand Cayman to launch their business because of what the Caymans represent. And it’s $3 trillion a year go through that little island. You’ve got every country of the world more or less represented there, and you have all these multinational companies and entrepreneurs that come together that have this amazing network. And when I go to visit their incubator slash accelerator, most people will say, well, why would you do that? That’s a competitor to what you do. It actually isn’t somebody that can compliments what can complement what we do, and we can complement what they do. So now somebody going through that Launch Lab’s incubator accelerator program may need the next level of growth, which means they come to us, we take ’em to that next level of growth, and we have no problem pipelining them to another model somewhere in the country or the world.

And then you build these bridges. So it’s very important that collaboration is truly the key to success. And the moment that you become competitive with one another, you’re just not going to move in the right direction. And we have a lot of individuals, organizations, public private sector that we engage with where we go in and we’re not a threat. We are Switzerland, and we will always bill ourselves as Switzerland, and we want you to be Switzerland as well. And then the walls eventually do come down and you realize that we’ve got infrastructure and resources, you’ve got infrastructure and resources. Some are similar, some are unique differentiators, but collectively, when you start to pull them together, amazing things begin to happen. And an innovation ecosystem without going through all the details, has 11 different elements. And there are a few regions of the world that have all of those 11. And the best example would be, I’ll say Silicon Valley, but it’s really the greater San Francisco area. However, it’s not what it used to be. So, when people say, oh, that’s the world’s best example, let’s copy it. And you try to do that in London or Dubai or wherever you can’t because it has a secret recipe that only works for that region, but you can adapt from it. As I come from the aviation industry, it’s like airlines. Southwest Airlines has always been the business school case study. It’s the most successful airline in the world, so let’s go replicate it in a different part of the world. And you can’t, because again, it has its own secret recipe that you can adapt from. So when people say that, oh, south Florida is the new Silicon Valley of the East or Silicon Beach or whatever you want to call it, I cringe and my hair goes up because we are not, nor should we ever be, and we don’t strive to be. We are our own unique region, and every region of the nation and every region of the world is unique in its own way.

And that’s how you have to market and brand yourself. And what’s interesting with all of the trends and the challenges and the opportunities and the new strategies that are being implemented here in South Florida, we’re starting to attract from Silicon Valley, from the Boston’s, from the New Yorks, from the Austins, and then cities from around the world where they’re focusing on South Florida because they see the trends that are occurring and they all want to be a piece of that in some capacity or another. So I will say that even in the last three years, it went from an extremely competitive region to definitely a more collaborative region where you now have county mayors that are willing to cross the lines. In fact, we have the Miami-Dade County on a panel with me on Monday in Broward County. She’s the first to put up her head and said, I’m not only the first female mayor of Miami-Dade County, but I’m also the first mayor that’s going to cross this line and break it down, and we’re going to collaborate with one another.

And this the same is going on in Broward and Palm Beach and so on. And tech companies are speaking to tech companies, which normally didn’t happen. They had their own individual worlds funders and angel investor and VC groups are coming together collaboratively even though they compete for the same resources, but they are partnering with one another. And it’s kind of funny to see an angel investor and a venture capitalist part of the same groups because rather than their own any longer, they realize that they need to collaborate. But some amazing things are happening. We have a long way to go, and the mountain is certainly moving, but collaboration is key. And I use it every day in our vocabulary. It’s the key to success.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

You just illuminated so many things that I want to pull the threads on, so I’m going to start and hopefully make it a linear path. But given this whole idea of localization and globalization of these innovation ecosystems, you’re absolutely right. A lot of times when you try to reinvent the wheel of a success of another area and bring it into your cultural perspective, you’re not necessarily taking into account the industries that already exist and how they operate and how the economies operate to make economies of scale. So that in and of itself, I always think that innovation starts local and then it needs to go global. Because to your point about collaborating with potential competitors, one of the things when I used to consult for entrepreneur, I mean I still do, but in my consulting job, I used to tell them all the time and challenge them to go to networking receptions and events of seemingly like adjacent industries.

Because certain industries, and I think this applies to ecosystems of themselves, you speak plus and minus 20% of the same language. So I always say this about the space industry. I know you’ve heard me say this a lot, we talk to ourselves. So you’re not really going to get much beyond networks in terms of a way of thinking differently. But if you go to a different type of event or a different industry, you may learn best practices or get a creative thought process at something that applies to enhance what your business is. And so it’s really critical to surround yourself by that because it’s only going to enhance what your future offering is.

John Wensveen:

You hit that bang on. And when you say you talk to yourself, that’s what so many industries do. They operate in their own silos and go back to airlines. Airlines talk to airlines. Airlines compete with airlines, airlines, airlines. Well, gee, what if you took an airline executive and put ’em in the maritime shipping business or in a technology business or a FinTech world? There are things that you’re going to learn and be able to put in, and that’s how innovation occurs. And it’s funny to me too, if you ask somebody what is innovation? It’s often very challenging for somebody to define what innovation is. We use the word every day, we overuse it, but do we even understand what innovation is? And it’s pretty simple in terms of definition, but if you don’t know what that is, then how do you get to the from first base to second base if you don’t even know what innovation is all about and how you address it?

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Oh yeah. I mean, because at the basic definition, innovation is just a better way of doing something. It doesn’t have to be technologically based, it doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s just improving upon a process,

John Wensveen:

Right? Here’s a challenge, here’s a strategic solution to it. That’s innovation.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah. Well, and going on the global piece that you talked about, and congratulations on signing the Cayman Islands. I know you had been really trying to get in that first country desk, so that’s very exciting.

John Wensveen:

Thank you.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

That really dovetails into where I want to go with the conversation and talk about this space innovation ecosystem. We are extremely excited about our partnership and for the listeners out there, so the Space Foundation has partnered with the Lavan Center to create level five space dock, which is really programming and resources to train space entrepreneurs and connect them to the global space ecosystem. But really what it’s focusing on is helping them find their place in space. Because I’m a firm believer, and John’s a firm believer in everyone that’s part of our ecosystem that any company interest in background and technology can find its heritage in space. But going on what you were saying about the Cayman Islands and being able to develop where they need to develop and grow, it’s the same thing with space because what I’ve seen is that people either get too geographically bound or too bound to what they think their technological silos are, and they don’t necessarily see their identity case in space. They’re not able to self-select in because they don’t understand what the future opportunities bring to bear and how they can build that future with other industries. So I’d love to get your perspective on that in terms of growing that space ecosystem, because in order to grow and sustain, we really need all people to participate because the landscape is just evolving rapidly.

John Wensveen:

So I mean better than anybody that the barriers of entry for space have been coming down and continue to, especially with the commercialization and privatization of the space sector. And space isn’t always what’s up there. It’s inner and outer space and betterment of earth applications. It’s a whole combination of things. And I’ll go back to a frustrating experience that started close to seven years ago. At that time I was living in Miami and I have a pretty global awareness and experience, and I know that there are emerging trends in space that South Florida was disconnected from. So I specifically went to the community in Miami and I said, dang it. Look at space not as industry, but as a sector, and we need to do something. We need to plant the space flag right here in Miami or South Florida. And every meeting I went into, oh, great idea, John.

But yeah, no space isn’t here in south Florida, we don’t do that. But I kept saying, but we do. There are so many different industries and companies that either directly or indirectly supports space in quotes, or they may not recognize that they have the opportunity to do so with a slight pivot and look at things a little bit differently. So candidly, I got thrown out of meetings all the time because everybody believes that spaceships and Martians and satellites, and it’s not. And then three years I was banging my head against a wall, why can’t I get anybody to see the big picture? So I took a rest from it. And then when I moved into my new role, I tried a different community, which was Broward County, which thinks a little bit differently than Miami, which thinks a little bit different than Palm Beach. And everybody has their own little areas of expertise and strategies.

And what I found was that that same message resonated a little bit more. And maybe because privatization is more commercialized now in the sense that people begin to see big names, big brands, and more familiarity with what’s going on, increased number of launches, you hear about satellites, you hear about these new technologies. Okay, great. So people started to listen and my motto then became, we’re going to plant the space flag in South Florida, the South Florida space flag, and it’s going to be a real flag and we’re going to put it in the soil and here’s why. And if you take our existing entrepreneurs and our community here throughout South Florida and create awareness and educate them on their business ideas and show them the trends that are occurring related to space that you could refocus. So I’ll give you an example of one specific company that was looking at how to grow food using different types of technologies, not necessarily recognizing that that has a space application, whether it’s on a space station or it’s on some kind of space vehicle, or it’s on another planet like Mars and doesn’t require soil.

It just needs a certain type of light, a certain type of humidity. And it’s nothing that we know that exists today, but now does. And oh gee, I could work with NASA, I could work with private industry to figure out how we can commercialize it and get it to the next level. Or there’s grant opportunities, there’s investor deals that are out there, and we have a company like that physically resident in the Lavan Center where it’s now just not an earth company, it’s a space company as it begins to evolve. And they really didn’t recognize that, gee, we could do that. So there’s numerous other examples where we work with companies in different types of technologies. It may be around data collection and how you better use a satellite to improve a certain kind of Indian, and it may be related to the marine sector, coral reef restoration, whatever it might be.

That’s space. And we can go on and on about what that looks like. But I think what’s happening now in South Florida is that there’s a change, a pivot in terms of what space means, and we can be directly and indirectly connected to it. And as you know, and you were a part of this historical event in October, we literally planted the South Florida Space Day flag right here in South Florida, right in Fort Lauderdale, where for the very first time, we took the space sector and the non-space sector, not just in our region, but in our state, and even from outside of our state, collectively under one roof, and put approximately 400 people together throughout a day to participate with speakers and panels and networking and exhibits. And what happened that day, a movement began and that movement continues and people are still talking about it and people are thinking and doing things differently, looking forward to next year’s space day, which will be even bigger and better.

But already we’re seeing little dents starting to be created where space is now something around the coffee table where people want to talk and be involved, and we’re helping lead that charge. And our partnership with the Space Foundation is absolutely fantastic because you’re national and international in scope, highly recognized, the brand is known, and it will be even more known. And we’re very appreciative that we’re working together in a collaborative. It’s not a vendor relationship, it’s a co-investor strategic partnership to build out what, as you mentioned, the level five space stock initiative that’s exclusively focused on space partnership. And it’s a very loose definition, but we’re going to support that founder’s journey for birth of an idea through a successful exit using our resources and knowledge and network together to truly create a space sector here in South Florida with international impact.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Oh, yeah. Well, and the space entrepreneurship really does need to be loosely defined at this point, because every day we are collectively building the future, both from a government, commercial, academia aspect to figure out what the future of space looks like. And as an ecosystem, we benefit from the fact that everybody agrees that space is cool. I mean everyone, you’re not going to really meet someone that’s not going to be interested in space, and even if they aren’t interested, at least sparks their interest to have a conversation about it. So it’s always a great equalizer. But the challenge is, like you said, is to get people to draw their heritage to space. And you were mentioning the whole Earth application space applications. A lot of people don’t realize that these ecosystems already exist because 95% of the global space, ROI, is the space to earth market. So

If you created an app, if you’re an app developer or you’re a financial institution that use some sort of financial timestamping, you have the space industry to think for that. And so I know that you and I have had broad conversations about this, but when you look at the ecosystem map for how space is going to look, it really is going to be one of those kind of mind mapping exercises where there’s always going to be spokes drawn to everything else. Because we start to get, as the future becomes more of a reality and more clear, as we have commerce and low earth orbit, every company is going to be necessary to build and sustain it. And so they need to recognize that now and then build their pathway toward it.

John Wensveen:

So just to show you how space is really beginning to take off, this is probably an appropriate time for me to put on the most highly demanded piece of clothing in South Florida right now,

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

And I’m very excited that I have secured at home.

John Wensveen:

Alright, so this is the space jacket, as you know. And we launched these at Space Day in October, and there are a number of people that were so excited, but I think there’s 250 people now that have or are waiting for their space jackets and walking around proudly. I’m a little embarrassed because I’m taking a mini vacation early in the new year on a cruise ship, and there’s a couple that just happens to be on the same cruise ship who participated at Space Day that have their jackets, and they’re going to be wearing their jackets on the cruise ship advertising to the world that space is in South Florida. So yeah, it’s great.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

It’s important because I want everyone to feel like if they want to join us, there’s a place for them to join us. They have a heritage in space. It’s important. And really going back to this whole collaborative environment to achieve our collective wish, there’s really five technical challenges that we need to accomplish right now for around launch. So making it more reliable, cheaper, routine, cost effective, but then also reentry. But the launch companies are really, really close to cracking those. So once that becomes a reality and we have the commercial space stations up, it’s important for people to think about what that is going to enable when we have lunar outpost. What is that going to enable when you can start mining for water on asteroids in the moon, when you can start manufacturing in space, it’s really starting to peel back the onion and see, okay, in order to sustain this sort of technological fruition, what are the other subcategories and narratives and industries that need to sustain it? And when you start to scale it back, it truly is everyone. And so really thinking about economies at scale and what that ecosystem is going to build toward, I think is really critical. And what kind of partnerships can be made going back to that theme, because these companies and entrepreneurs don’t need to do it alone. They obviously can seek the help of a facility like the Lavan Center or whatever’s in their locality, but also looking at other interesting startups and entrepreneurial companies that they can combine to create something better.

John Wensveen:

Yeah, and you said something earlier about culture, and I’ll talk about mindset in a community, is you have to create awareness programs, education programs to show, and that you’re not in it by yourself. And it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, smart or not even smart. It’s about if you’ve got an idea

And you need to know how to connect that idea to a network. And that’s where we come in. And so we’re out there actively banging on people’s doors. What kind of idea do you have? And if we’ve got, we’ll help facilitate that to the next level. And what I also think is really important in terms of the longer term future is just working with young minds, get them at the earliest stage possible so that they become excited about what space is in this particular conversation to realize that there’s so much more than what they’re going to be taught and that there are entrepreneurial pathways and career pathways that allow you to be in that sector. And there are even more, and there are so many unknown opportunities that will happen over the coming years. And you can be one of those instrumental drivers. When I was down in the Caymans last week, I met a 12-year-old, that’s one of the brightest people I’ve ever encountered in my entire life that had this amazing AI application that she was building, not recognizing that it could be commercialized on a global basis and could be used in space.

And we were having this discussion about that you could be this or do that and no idea. So how do you get to those smart minds at the earliest and create a life cycle of knowledge and qualified skill talent that begins to become the leaders and the influencers and the disruptors within this particular area of opportunity.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

So that dovetails very nicely into my last question that I wanted to ask you. But thinking about these future bright minds or existing companies, because earlier we touched upon the art of the pivot, which I believe is a completely necessary and valid business point, especially when you look at the space industry. What I want to make sure is known for our viewers that if you’re an existing company that is already thriving in an industry, you might be able to just tweak an existing product or service for a new application in space. So these principles don’t necessarily just apply to new emerging companies, it really applies to everyone. But if someone is excited about the future, future of innovation, of space, of becoming part of an ecosystem, but they don’t know where to start, so what kind of advice would you give ’em to really make that next best step?

John Wensveen:

So I would say the best advice is that if you bring that discussion forward, chances are that someone’s going to say, you’re crazy. You can’t do that. You can’t go into space. So the guidance there is that’s not your try, right? Those are not your people. You keep going and knocking on doors until you get somebody that’s going to listen to you and help support you and elevate you to that next level. And the most important thing that I can say to our listening audience is try to find your innovation center. They’re often referred to as entrepreneurship centers. And if you don’t know where to start, Google it in your own community and you’ll see things that’ll start to pop up. Often you can go to your local university, sometimes it’s your own local community college, and they’ll have a version of an incubator or an accelerator or an idea center to help you.

And they should be good pathways or doors that will then put you in contact with others within that network. Because even though we’re a whole world innovation and entrepreneurship centers is a very small world and more or less, everybody knows each other or will at some point in time. But the most important thing I can say, and I said, so in a TED Talk this last year, I said, find your innovation center that is your tribe and that is the safe, friendly environment that’s going to get you to the next level. And once you’ve established that relationship, don’t worry about it. It’ll be taken care of from that point onward.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, no, that’s great advice. I always tell people that entrepreneurship is a full contact sport.

John Wensveen:

Yes, I got a lot of bruises.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

I’m also reminded of that quote by Winston Churchill that I think it’s success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm,

Which is truly correct because I remember when I was starting my consulting company, my clients came from the most unexpected places. So it wasn’t the people that I thought was immediately going to be a contact, but it would be through a random conversation I had with someone at a barbecue who all of a sudden ran into someone the next week who referred me. I mean, it really is this non-linear path, but you just have to trust in what you want to bring to market and what you want to bring out to the world and know that there will be ears to hear it and receive it.

John Wensveen:

Absolutely. Go with your gut, avoid the naysayers, and you’ll find your people. And that’s the benefit to coming to somebody like a Lavan Center of Innovation. There are other types of models around the world, but I think you said it best in terms of summing it up, but that’s the most is important. Find your innovation center and then you will find yourself.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yes. And if you don’t also know where to start, just contact John and I. We can point you. Absolutely.

John Wensveen:

Happy to do so.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, John, thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. Is there anything that we didn’t touch upon that you wanted to make sure to get across?

John Wensveen:

There’s so much we didn’t touch upon. We don’t have 20 hours to do this, but no, I think we got some really good points across. I’m very, very happy about our partnership. I’m extremely excited and optimistic about the future of space, short, medium, and I think it’s just so important for people to recognize if you’re a young entrepreneur starting out or you’re an established entrepreneur, looking for that next opportunity is that, again, those barriers of entry are coming down. The resources are more available than ever before and need to be creative and flexible and strategic. And don’t be afraid to knock on doors and find out what’s going on and go to events in your community and just learn, look, listen, and then apply once you’ve got that under your belt. I’m very excited that I had the opportunity to be on the Vector with you today. I’m so excited about the Space Foundation partnership that we’ve created and continue to grow and looking forward to what happens over the next year and the coming years. Thank you.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

No, we’re very excited. Please be on the lookout for level five Space Dock coming to Broward County, south Florida and globally and beyond. And for our listeners, thank you for joining us today. Please be on the lookout for future vector conversations, and as always, there is a place for everyone in the future space economy. Thanks so much. Yeah, bye.

 

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The Value of Innovation Ecosystems

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