SEMO Creative Labs Incubator groundbreaking is Saturday

The Douglas C. Greene Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Southeast Missouri State University will break ground at 10:30 a.m. Saturday on a Creative Labs and Industries Incubator, to be located at 612 Broadway.

The project was made possible in part by a $750,000 gift from Charles Stamp Jr., vice president, public affairs worldwide, at Deere & Company, a position he has held since September 2002.

A Missouri native, Stamp received a bachelor's degree from Southeast Missouri State University and holds the university's distinguished Alumni Merit Award. He earned a law degree from the University of Missouri School of Law in Columbia in 1974.

He practiced law from 1974 until 1981 in Sikeston, Mo.

A news release from Southeast describes the incubator as a new, one-of-a-kind program that cultivates creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship by connecting interdisciplinary teams of students, faculty and practitioners in integrated laboratories to design novel product and service concepts and test business models through a modern commercial marketplace.

James Stapleton is executive director of the center and developed the new concept to improve on current incubator approaches that the news release said offer little more than inexpensive rent.

"The creative economy is based on new ways of thinking and doing. The most important inputs are individual talent or skill, combined with creativity that generates novelty and transforms familiar ideas into innovations," he said. "Current incubator approaches don't bring together creative talent in environments that spawn new ideas with tools to develop innovations, and a marketplace to test business models. Our new program is where creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship come alive."

rcampbell@semissourian.com

388-3639

Pertinent address:

612 Broadway, Cape Girardeau, MO