Jeff Bennett's Blog

We have alot of innovation happening in New England.  It is great to celebrate all of this and bring awareness with “New England Innovation Month” in June.  You can check out the line up of events across the region at the  New England Innovation web site.

I was honored to participate in the MITX Awards as a judge this year and let me tell you firsthand that there are some great new ideas and ventures in the works right here!  The MITX Awards are one of the anchors of New England Innovation Month.

I also attended the Venture East Conference last week and witnessed many interesting ventures in the “CEO Briefs.”  

Great to see Tech Stars kick off in Cambridge this past week as well.  Another sign of our community working to bring to life new business ideas.  I am particularly excited about Tech Stars as we are uniting the entrepreneurial community of New England to mentor young businesses.  Best of luck to Shawn Broderick and the nine companies going through “boot camp” this summer.

One addition to the schedule in the week ahead is a related event:  ”Naked Without My Data – Transforming Data Into Customers, Capital and Opportunity In The Innovation Economy.”  This session is perfect for Innovation Month.  The panel will be led by Pip Coburn, the author of “The Change Function.”  I will be on the panel along with Lawrence Gennari who is a Partner at Choate, Ken Bero the CEO of Datawatch, Greg Boesel the CEO of SwapTree.Com, Bryce Youngren who is a Partner at Polaris Ventures and David Rickery who is a Partner at Choate.  The event will be held Wednesday, June 3, at the DoubleTree Suites Hotel in Waltham, from 8am-10am.  Hope to see you there.

Bringing new ideas that innovate are what this is all about.  We have lots of this activity going on right here in New England.  We respect our brethren in Silicon Valley…but you dont have to take your ideas out to California to get funding or mentoring.  We have it right here!  Hope to see you at many of the events for New England Innovation Month!