Driving Innovation with “The Nucleus”

It’s the holiday season, and shopping malls are officially the busiest places on earth. Traffic is unpleasant, the lines are long and the store that always saves the day for last-minute gift ideas is no longer in business.

At best, one feels out of luck and overwhelmed, so the mall directory becomes the tool of choice. After fighting through the ad-filled marquee, unfamiliar store names with unfamiliar products come into focus, and the hunt begins.

Imagine if mall directories were useful. Imagine if they displayed more adequate information other than the location of each store and how much one could save on diamonds at the jewelry store on the second floor. Imagine if the mall directory also had information on what products each store sold, how much the products cost, what sizes and colors the products came in and even an option to compare which other stores carried the same products, but at potentially lower price points.

Shopping would become enjoyable and time-efficient.

And while access to this sort of information has not yet reached the local shopping malls, the Oklahoma City Innovation District has built similar access to our growing ecosystem in the world of networking and collaboration.

The Innovation District has a tool called a Cognitive City, branded as The Nucleus, which is a state-of-the-art knowledge graph software developed by Exaptive. The District is using this platform to get its ecosystem connected to the information, industries and ideas needed to solve problems and drive innovation, and it functions much like the ‘ideal’ mall directory noted above. There’s no need to wait until this platform goes on sale because the tool is free and open to everyone.

In August of 2021, the Innovation launched The Nucleus to its network with the help of a team of local ambassadors. From its launch, the District’s Cognitive City began to fill not only with researchers, entrepreneurs, academics and other professionals, but it also began to fill with their expertise, ideas, questions, industries and networks. Since its launch, The Nucleus has hosted five separate programming opportunities, and it has seen 150+ users on-board onto the platform, 15 collaboration requests submitted and 50+ ideas, aka: ‘Sparks’ published.

With plans to utilize The Nucleus at more events and programming opportunities in 2022, this virtual representation of the Innovation District’s ecosystem is set to grow exponentially and spur even more innovation in Oklahoma City. As the founder of Exaptive, Dave King says, “Innovation doesn’t have to be serendipitous.” It can be planned and facilitated with the right resources and connections.

The projects and professions you engage with can be visualized. Networking can be more than exchanging business cards at a happy hour. You can now make connections virtually with other innovators to activate cross-industry collaboration.

Join The Nucleus – The OKC Innovation District’s Cognitive City
Onboarding will take 1-2 minutes.

The knowledge graph will only grow as users onboard, so if it looks empty as you join, give it time, and invite your friends, co-workers and other professionals to join and get connected. Think of it like growing your Facebook friend group, only based on innovative ideas!