It’s not often that there’s innovation news coming out of North Dakota. With that in mind, here are the highlights of a new program called “Innovate North Dakota,” a new statewide economic development initiative designed to help entrepreneurs turn business ideas into functional businesses in cities such as Bismarck and Fargo:

During a press conference held Thursday at Minot State University, [North Dakota Commerce Commissioner] Shane Goettle explained that Innovate ND is an intensive, six-month program that will provide direct assistance to people who have business ideas for North Dakota people. “This is a call to all innovators. We invite anyone with a business idea – big or small – to enroll in Innovate ND and get help developing that idea into a business plan and ultimately, we hope, into a viable new North Dakota business,” Goettle said.

Goettle further explained that the purpose of the program is to offer a hands-on approach to provide direct assistance to keep people in North Dakota and nurture their ideas. “North Dakota’s future growth depends to a large degree on our ability to grow businesses and our economy from within,” Goettle said. “Innovate ND is a way to cultivate the budding entrepreneurs among us.”

[image: North Dakota Commerce Commissioner Shane Goettle]

In the weeks leading up to the FORTUNE Innovation Forum in New York City on November 29-30, the Business Innovation Insider is pleased to present a regular series of thought pieces with innovative thinkers in business and academia. At the FORTUNE Innovation Forum, Paul Kwiecinski, the Managing Partner of Face the Music, will be leading a workshop that will engage participants in writing, singing and performing original blues songs about life in today’s business environment. Building on his experiences at Face The Music, Paul Kwiecinski will help forward-thinking individuals go beyond their “business blues” in order to refocus their energies on a compelling, collective vision of the future. In this Business Innovation Insider exclusive Q&A, Paul Kwiecinski shares his thoughts and insights about the process of business innovation:

Q: When it comes to innovation, what advantages/disadvantages do you feel small businesses have compared to their larger competitors?

Paul Kwiecinski: Small businesses have several advantages in innovation. One big advantage is a matter of physics - the inertia and mass of a large corporation makes it much more difficult to maneuver and change course. Small businesses are like cigarette boats, while the large ones are like tankers. Small businesses can respond to market changes and opportunities much more quickly. As in the Internet revolution, small businesses led the charge and defined how the Web was going to work.

The entrepreneurial spirit of small businesses is also innovative by nature. There is an action and response cycle that is fast-paced and adaptable. I’ve seen many long-term planning projects in corporations be scrapped because they were obsolete before they were completed. The small business approach of seeing an opportunity and forming an intention and approach around it, and getting into action is much more effective in today’s business environment.

In pharmaceuticals, most of the new drugs are coming from the small companies and being bought by the giants, while the big companies’ pipelines of internally developed molecules is sparse, despite the enormous resources available to them.

Flexibility, speed to respond, adaptability, networked resources, and a streamlined decision making process are key.

Q: As a small business, how does being closer to your customers and partners enable you to innovate either smarter or faster?

Paul Kwiecinski: Many of our existing offerings and products came from our customers; from having a dialog about what they are experiencing, and working together on approaches and solutions. Some just came from them saying: “Could you do…? It’s immediate and just-in-time information and response.

With our partners, it has been important to make and take time to be together in an unstructured way to make new and disparate connections and see various threads running through the issues and opportunities in front of us.

Q: What is your favorite small business innovation story?

Paul Kwiecinski: Maybe my own. We took a team-building exercise (writing blues songs) that was spontaneously delivered at an event in Paris in 1998, recognized that it might have great potential and developed a separate business that has operated prosperously for seven years. There was a moment of inspiration in doing it originally, and then a separate moment of inspiration by another partner to say, “Wait a minute, a lot of people could benefit from this.”

Q: What are the challenges in scaling a small-scale innovation into a large-scale innovation?

Paul Kwiecinski: There are three challenges: (1) To continue innovating, not to bog the idea down in large-scale mechanics (2) Coming to market quickly while the idea is timely and fresh and (3) Establishing good connection and communication between initiators, implementers and users.