New Wave Accelerators with John Lynn of The Studio Project

Hi everyone, Rob Kleiman here. Excited to share a conversation with John Lynn from the Studio Project. John Lynn is the Co-founder and Partner at Studio Project and a mentor of mine from when I went through the Startup Institute. My project Megashift is focused on documenting disruption and talking about big trends in business - John's a legend in his own right as a leader in the NYC tech community.

The Studio project brings together top entrepreneurs and corporate product teams to create innovative outcomes. It's an accelerator that helps make acceleration easier (though that's somewhat oversimplifying the genius of the project). The general mission of the company is to expand the scope of the accelerator model from soley working for people and organizations in the tech community and instead working to create value in other places or sectors. 

We know the "Acceleration Model" has largely been successful in creating hundreds and potentially thousands of companies all over the world at this point. John argues that we must see accelerators as frameworks for innovation in corporate or institutional settings like at corporations, governments, and universities - not just in tech. 

Accelerators don't only have to be about technology. They don't only have to be about innovation (overused buzzword anyone?)They don't even have to be about startups. There can be a focus on using accelerators as a framework for education in any scenario. That means building many different types of accelerators. Some could potentially help people engage with a political future more easily or help to connect them with an arts community. 

The Studio project builds an accelerator inside a company, and through a collaborative "acceleration lab" partner companies build and further frontier technologies by leveraging the ability of startups. the studio project focuses on on fostering a talent, insight, and product for for the companies that they serve. It's what known as building a platform as a system for innovation and corporations institutions universities. are for different verticals and politics or the Arts then that means not just bringing in experts and participants from the industry inside that corporation or in that government or at that university but also from the institution itself by combining those two communities create an experience that is valuable for both parties.

One of the best outcomes John mentions is in the smart cities technology vertical. The team that went through the Studio Project program got the facilitation from the curriculum, community, and input from the partner institution to successfully create an augmented reality app. The app has won a couple of awards at civic technology conferences and eventually won a contract with one of the largest cities in the United States. It now it was an active mobile app offered by that city to its entire population that's an outcome that was possible through a 12 week three-month program and using this framework. Now that's cool!