Where Innovation Happens by Tim Rowe

Back in episode 11 of Where Innovation Happens, I took a slight departure from the main focus of this podcast — the places and spaces where people innovate — to explore a process that matters deeply for every innovation company: how to select amazing people to join your team. ⠀ At the time, I mentioned that I would publish the conversation in two parts. ⠀ Part 1 (episode 11) focused on how to deci...

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down with Daniel Koh, a candidate for Congress in Massachusetts’ Sixth District, for a conversation about innovation, competitiveness, and the role political leaders can play in helping builders build. ⠀ Political leaders can have profound impacts on the innovation landscape. With this in mind, this is the first of what I expect will be a number o...

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down at CIC Berlin with Marvin Göldner, co-head of Startup Incubator Berlin, the entrepreneurship center of the Berlin School of Economics and Law. Startup Incubator Berlin is located within CIC Berlin. Marvin works right at the beginning of the startup journey. He describes his world as “zero to one”: working with entrepreneurs from the moment wh...

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down at CIC Berlin with Jorge Ferreira, founder of LIQUIDLOOP GmbH, a Berlin-based startup working at the frontier of climate technology, electrochemistry, and sustainable chemistry. This episode is part of a larger experiment I am doing to occasionally interview entrepreneurs working within innovation hubs, to learn about the innovation process f...

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down in Berlin with Ewa Geresz, Director of Venture Café Berlin and one of the people helping grow the Venture Café network around the world. Venture Café has a simple mission: connecting innovators to make things happen. As Ewa explains in this conversation, there is a lot of thought and care behind this. Every week, in cities around the world, V...

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down in Berlin with Timon Rupp. Timon has spent much of his career at the intersection of technology, mobility, startups, corporates, and public policy. Before joining CIC as Managing Director for Germany, Timon founded and led The Drivery, one of the world’s best-known mobility innovation hubs. He and I share the vision that if we bring bright pe...

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down in Tokyo with Tak Umezawa, a leading voice in Japan’s innovation ecosystem and Chairman of CIC Japan, for a wide-ranging conversation about Japan’s innovation economy. Tak has had a front-row seat to many sides of Japanese innovation. For much of his career, he led A.T. Kearney in Japan, stepping down as its Chairman last year. In that role,...

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down with Sheamus McGovern, founder and CEO of ODSC AI and author of The AI Skill Flip, to talk about what AI really means for professionals, cities, and innovation ecosystems. The book itself can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/AI-Skill-Flip-Professionals-Reinventing/dp/B0GTX3D6W8 Sheamus has been part of the data science and machine learni...

In this bonus episode of Where Innovation Happens , I take a slight departure from the main focus of our podcast — the places and spaces where people innovate — to explore a key process that is important for all innovation companies: selecting amazing candidates to work for your business. I will publish two parts to this episode: Part 1, this video, which focuses on how to choose who to interview...

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down with John Land, General Manager of CIC St. Louis, to explore the innovation story of St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis is one of America’s great historic innovation cities. Its position on the Mississippi River made it a gateway for goods, people, and ideas moving across the continent. Over time, that geographic advantage helped the city become...

In this post, I share a "fireside chat" I was part of at the Housing Innovation Summit held on April 29th at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The conversation was moderated by the UMass Lowell Vice Chancellor Anne Maglia. I was joined onstage by Kei Hayashi, Principal at BJH Advisors. Kei spent much of her career at New York City's Economic Development Corporation, and is a ho...

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sat down with Bekir Polat, Vice President of the Investment and Finance Office of the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye. Bekir and his team were visiting the Boston area to meet with political and venture leaders. I had met Bekir's boss, Burak Dağlıoğlu, the President of the Investment Office of the Presidency of Türkiye, at Websummit in Doha...

For this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I spoke with Bartosz “Bartek” Lipnicki, Managing Director of Endeavor Poland, about Poland’s fast-growing innovation ecosystem and the role Endeavor is playing globally in helping ambitious founders scale. Poland has become one of Europe’s most interesting startup markets, building on one of the region’s most impressive long-term economic growth storie...

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down with Patrick Walsh, CEO of Dogpatch Labs, one of Ireland’s most important startup and innovation hubs, based in an historic building in Dublin’s Docklands. Dogpatch Labs sits at the heart of Dublin’s technology ecosystem, surrounded by the European headquarters and major offices of companies like Google, Meta, Stripe, HubSpot, OpenAI, and Ant...

This is the core episode in my entire podcast. It is a deeper (~40 minute) version of the ~10 minute Episode 1 that I launched this show with. I share the entire sweep of my work, starting with the foundations of CIC to the work I am focused on now, and how we see innovation hubs evolving in the future. In this episode I introduce for the first time the concept of "innovation meccas": the ideal ty...

In this bonus episode, I share a panel discussion from WebSummit Qatar this year entitled "From Hubs to High Growth". I was pleased to appear on stage alongside Mohammed Al Emadi, the head of Investment and Incubation at Qatar Development Bank, and Burak Dağlıoğlu, the President of the Investment Office of the Presidency of Türkiye. We explored what is happening in the gulf, and around the world i...

This episode is a conversation recorded live in Tokyo with two of the world's most vibrant innovation driving organizations: France's Station F and UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA). Station F is the world's largest accelerator program, supporting over 1,000 companies per year. Its striking physical facility is a converted railway freight station. It comprises over...

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I speak with my new friend, the mononymous Kavikrut, CEO of T-Hub. Located in Hyderabad, India. T-Hub is the largest single-building startup innovation space I am aware of anywhere the world, and is one of the "big four" largest innovation "campuses" (including multiple affiliated buildings) I know of worldwide. The others for refere...

For the past 27 years, I’ve been building and operating places where innovation happens: hubs housing hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of startups at the heart of their cities’ innovation ecosystems. On this channel, I will share what I’ve learned and introduce the people shaping startup ecosystems around the world. I’m the founder of Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), and I also co-founded LabC...