Silicon Flatirons starting accelerator for government

BOULDER — In an era when new accelerators for startup businesses seemingly are sprouting every month, a research center at the University of Colorado Boulder is taking the concept in a different direction — forming an accelerator to help government officials think like entrepreneurs.

The Governmental Entrepreneurial Leadership Accelerator is being launched by CU’s Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship, which bills it as a first-of-its-kind venture.

“In a world where innovation and an entrepreneurial mindset is taking companies and organizations to new heights, we thought it only made sense to try the approach with government — to encourage innovation at a time when governments need to do more with less,” said Phil Weiser, former CU law school dean and the center’s executive director. “Colorado is the natural place to develop such a model.

“This topic is very close to my heart,” he said, “as I have written on it before and will focus on the challenge of entrepreneurial leadership in government during my post-deanship scholarly agenda.”

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and the Blackstone Charitable Foundation are helping Silicon Flatirons develop and launch the pilot program. Over the next 12 weeks, GELA will bring together nine employees of the city and county of Denver and four CU law students as fellows to take part in a cutting-edge entrepreneurial curriculum, learn from regional and national mentors, and test entrepreneurial solutions for identified challenges facing Denver.

Blackstone, which provided a grant for Silicon Flatirons to host the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network, is following up with a $75,000 grant to Silicon Flatirons to run the GELA pilot program and learn from the initial experience. If it’s successful, Weiser said, “we believe that this could be a model of civic and governmental innovation that could be expanded and introduced in other parts of the United States and across the world.”

GELA’s stated mission is to train a generation of innovators in government who can approach public-policy problem solving in an entrepreneurial manner.  Following a three-week boot camp, which was to start Tuesday, the participating fellows will tackle challenges in four policy areas and present their ideas to Hancock at a pitch night on July 21 at Galvanize Denver, 1644 Platte St. The policy areas include ensuring effective transportation solutions for the homeless, developing the city’s retail regulatory framework, providing internet access for low-income individuals and increasing access to composting services.

“To our knowledge, no other city or government has collaborated with a university for an accelerator program like this one before,” Weiser said.

More information is available on GELA’s web page.

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