Education, inspiration crucial for Innovation Hub, director says

HOT SPRINGS — The Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub is working to “make the impossible possible” when it comes to new ideas and products, according to its chief executive and lead maker, Chris Jones.

“For those who don’t know the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, it’s a nonprofit, and our mission is we’re completely dedicated to educating and inspiring a community of creatives, technologists, entrepreneurs, to be the makers of the future,” Jones told a group of Arkansas educators gathered for the 25th annual Hot Springs Technology Institute conference Thursday.

“Our vision is that we make the impossible possible. So for us, if you come in with an idea, we want to help you turn that idea into a product. If you have a product, we want to help you turn that product into a business.”

Jones, a Pine Bluff native and a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, shared his “four important implications” to help students reach their potential.

“One is that our new economy requires a new workforce. The new workforce needs new knowledge, new skills, new approaches,” he said. “The other is that some places are skipping the grid. … In developing countries, they’re skipping the grid and going directly to cellphone technology, wireless technology. We can skip the development of an infrastructure and grid and create innovation that has never been created.”

The third and fourth implications, Jones said, are that growing talent requires looking where educators have not always looked, and meeting students where they are.

“As educators, we are going to have to open our eyes and find the student who may not be the one that would typically get identified as the most intelligent student,” he said. “We can’t focus on meeting talent where we want them to be. We have to meet talent where they actually are, wherever that is. …

“We are trying to break down barriers and expose students — and when I say students I mean people from 8 to 80 years old — who have not been exposed to those things. If I had not been exposed to the things that I had been exposed to as a young child, I never would have been to MIT.”

Jones said there are two ways the Innovation Hub aims to partner with educators — STEM Arkansas and the STEAM Roller.

“For STEM Arkansas, we need educators as our partners,” he said, using the acronym for science, technology, engineering and math. “It’s a program that brings science and engineering to a particular place, often places that are far away from your normal locales of innovation. We can bring 100 students together on a Saturday, give them that hands-on experience and let them take that experience back with them. It supplements what they learn in school.”

The STEAM Roller — which adds “art” to the STEM acronym — is a mobile Innovation Hub that will officially launch this fall, he said. It has tools for 3D printing, laser cutting, screen printing and ceramics.

“Not everyone in the state of Arkansas can get to North Little Rock,” where the Innovation Hub is based, Jones said. “In fact, there are several schools who for various reasons cannot make a field trip. So we decided if they can’t come to us, why can’t we go to them?”

Jones said the STEAM Roller teaches students in their usual classrooms.

Jones said there is currently no cost for schools get the mobile Innovation Hub to their campus. However, there are limited funds to send it out across the state, so the Innovation Hub is working to find additional funding.