Innovation Collective Silver Valley is a reason to get excited
Photo by JOSH MCDONALD Simon Miller addresses the crowd while Grace Stamsos and Frank Durham (both to the left) wait their turn during the Innovation Collective’s lunch with the Silver Valley Chamber of Commerce. Miller, Durham and Stamsos are the IC’s Silver Valley team.
The old YMCA building in uptown Kellogg will become the Silver Valley’s version of the Innovation Collective’s Innovation Den in Coeur d’Alene. The building will feature conference space, office spaces, various retail components, as well as living spaces and a fitness club.
KELLOGG — Warm light pours from an aged brick building in downtown Coeur d’Alene.
The building, once a hub for the community, has been repurposed in design, but is once again open as a place where the community can gather, meet other people, grab a coffee, get a haircut and even secure some office space.
That is the Innovation Collective’s (IC) Innovation Den in downtown Coeur d’Alene.
In Kellogg, the group has started working on repeating that process, but within the walls of the historic YMCA building in the uptown McKinley Avenue area.
IC has taken on the responsibility of trying to restore and rebuild communities by helping them unlock the untapped abilities within each person.
Perhaps no one can better explain the heart of the Innovation Collective better than founder Nick Smoot.
“Innovation Collective is the idea that people in towns everywhere have really great ideas that often die in silos because they’re not talking to each other or getting connected,” Smoot said. “I believe we can help get those ideas out. I also believe that a town and a community connected is just better.”
With work on Innovation Collective’s Silver Valley location well underway, the group has already started planning events in the near future.
Events like their Fireside Chats, where they bring in a speaker who may have stories, ideas and/or experience to lend the audience. They also host their Coffee and Concepts meetings where people gather on certain weekday mornings to discuss technology or just advancements in their own innovations and ideas.
Earlier this week, IC hosted a Fireside Chat with Eve Luppert as the guest speaker inside the Coeur d’Alene Innovation Den.
Luppert is the vice president of talent management with Pipl, an information services company, who in 1983-84 worked for the New York based Chiat/Day marketing firm that helped make Apple’s iconic “1984” Super Bowl commercial (YouTube it if you haven’t seen it).
Bringing these kinds of people into the community to speak and share their experiences is only part of what the IC can offer.
In Kellogg, Smoot and the rest of the IC have created a local team that will help them find their niche in the Silver Valley.
Team members Simon Miller, Frank Durham and Grace Stamsos are locals who have taken a direct interest in cultivating the IC and building its early presence in the Silver Valley.
Miller, a lifelong resident of the Valley, sees the positive of the Innovation Collective and is hopeful to see a county-wide restoration, but with new ideas and industry paving the way.
“I am a firm believer in the power of coming together as a community and collaborating. There are many great things and talented individuals residing and working in the Silver Valley, and we need to encourage and foster those people and ideas and help our community and area thrive,” Miller said. “This does not need to be a wholesale change or turning our backs on some of the things that made the Silver Valley great. But at the same time, we need to embrace new ideas and change.”
Durham has been in the area for 12 years and has seen the area through the 2008 recession and watched as the region has recouped, but that is why he sees the Innovation Collective as such a boon to community.
“I was invited to come to one of their meetings and I was just blown away by the energy and excitement these guys were bringing,” Durham said. “It’s contagious. These guys want to see the community come together and share ideas and see where they can maybe help one another or build one another up.”
For Stamsos, the IC provides her a chance to really get to know the community she recently moved into, and with her entrepreneurial background it makes sense as to why she was drawn to this group.
"Being familiar with the IC in Coeur d’Alene, I was so excited when I heard they would be coming this way," Stamsos said. "I am so excited to be part of what is being built here, because this is now my community. Entrepreneurs need connections, they need to know the people around them, and they need support. Innovation Collective has a track record of both these things. The building itself (the YMCA), is really secondary to the active engagement of our members. Innovation Collective's foundation is active support, and the building is simply a gathering place for that to happen. The building does, however, create a tangible atmosphere for these things to happen. That is what is most exciting to me."
The building is set to feature active conference space, rentable office spaces, a renovated pool and hot tub area, as well retail and private living spaces.
Innovation Collective Silver Valley already has an event set for next month and those interested should mark their calendars for 6 p.m. Oct. 10, at the Broken Wheel in Kellogg to catch the area’s first Fireside Chat.