John Silva: Defining the Connector Role, Boston World Partnerships Interview
1. 11/19/10 7:07 PM| Boston World Partnerships
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BWP is a Boston alumni network
connecting you to Boston’s
innovation economy.
Boston is a hotbed of
entrepreneurship. 68% of
our Connectors have
started a company.
2. 11/19/10 7:07 PM| Boston World Partnerships
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BWP uses network
intelligence to identify
and capture opportunities
for economic growth.
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People networks are
the roads and bridges of
an idea-centric world.
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BWP is a mutual
benefit model. By helping
you grow, we strengthen
our city.
5. 11/19/10 7:07 PM| Boston World Partnerships
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BWP is a concierge desk
for growing businesses.
Tell us what resource
you need.
6. 11/19/10 7:07 PM| Boston World Partnerships
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BWP brings together
innovators, entrepreneurs,
and leaders to grow
Boston’s economy.
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BWP listens.
That’s how we capture
all the cool stuff
bubbling up in Boston.
8. 11/19/10 7:07 PM| Boston World Partnerships
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BWP brings together great
people for big, bold
conversations.
9. 11/19/10 7:07 PM| Boston World Partnerships
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BWP lifts people out of
silos to share ideas, spark
business growth, and
change the world.
10. 11/19/10 7:07 PM| Boston World Partnerships
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BWP gives global business
people a way to stay
connected to Boston’s
innovation economy.
11. 11/19/10 7:07 PM| Boston World Partnerships
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BWP is a tool for
you to access Boston’s
economic assets and
opportunities.
12. 11/19/10 7:07 PM| Boston World Partnerships
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Connectors unlock a
thousand different doors in
Boston’s global network.
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BWP is international.
Our Connectors come from
more than 30 different
countries.
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Inform & Connect. That’s
our mantra for serving you,
and serving Boston.
15. 11/19/10 7:07 PM| Boston World Partnerships
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BWP believes that Boston
offers the world’s best
environment for
innovative companies.
16. 11/19/10 7:07 PM| Boston World Partnerships
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Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
John Silva: Defining the BWP Connector role
Boston World Partnerships’ Connectors represent the most exciting piece of our model for
strengthening Boston’s economy and deepening the world’s understanding of Boston’s
economic assets and opportunities. They drive our whole concept, sharing insights and
helping others access the various nooks and crannies of Boston’s economy.
As our founder and Board Chair, Mayor Thomas M. Menino, told The Boston Globe back
in October, “We’ve always known that our people are our best resource, and that’s exactly
who this new strategy employs.”
I’m writing this on April 1, about five weeks after our launch. Already, our Connectors are
identifying numerous opportunities to share resources with other Boston business people,
both locally and abroad. They are building and nurturing new relationships as a step to
generating high-quality leads for economic growth. And they are authoring and sharing
content about Boston and about their respective areas of expertise, helping to demonstrate
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the unusually high-caliber human capital that businesses find here in Boston.
One of our most active Connectors is John Silva. In fact, John is really helping us define
what it means to be a BWP Connector. In this post, we go beyond John’s brief bio
(featured on our site) to learn more about his background and about his perspective on
Boston as a place that presents an incredibly rich array of intellectual, social, and
business opportunities.
When one talks with John, one hears certain words repeat themselves. Trust.
Entrepreneurship. Service. Ideas. These themes come together in Incunation.com, where
John is Co-Founder and President. He describes Incunation as “a private venture
community of trust where entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial professionals can efficiently
find high-quality talent and ventures.”
I see it simply as a safe space for people to find the help they need to achieve their
dreams. This is a site that is destined to become central to Boston’s burgeoning culture of
entrepreneurship. I’m proud that this kind of effort is beginning in Greater Boston, and of
course I’m grateful to John for his leadership as a Connector. Here is our Q&A…
Dave McLaughlin: What led you to move to Greater Boston?
John Silva: I was completing my Second Tour of Duty during Operation Iraqi Freedom in
the US Marine Corps in 2003 and I wanted to immerse myself in a highly academic
environment and complete a broad liberal arts education, after taking general college
courses on active duty. My only connection to Boston was a family friend whom was
about to graduate from Harvard College. After researching the Boston area on the
Internet from Camp Pendleton, California, and a phone conversation with her, I decided it
was the right place for me to start fresh and transfer to university after my military
service.
DM: What are you really passionate about?
JS: My passion is long-term value. I am inspired by the great contributions of human
civilization in the past and what we will achieve in the future; studying Classical History
changed my life forever. As a war veteran, I was initially attracted to study Homeric epic
and Spartan martial culture in the original Ancient Greek, but it was the contributions to
the development of civilization by the first scientists, philosophers and artists of humanity,
which truly consumed me. I found it compelling that over thousands of years, it was
multicultural and trade-friendly cities open to new ideas, which were always the centers of
Golden Ages in civilization. Some of the most notable case studies were Minoan Crete,
Pre-Socratic Ionia, Achaemenid Persia, Classical Athens and Rome, Hellenistic
Alexandria, Bait Al-Hikma in Baghdad, Ashoka’s Mauryan Dynasty, and Spanish Al-
Andalus. Classical Humanism was my impetus to translate this idealism into pragmatic
action in the field of Social Entrepreneurship.
DM: Why did you stay here after your academic studies?
JS: The Boston area is a major epicenter for the Social Entrepreneurship movement; I
invested all of my professional activity in that direction after my graduation. I was able to
explore socially conscious business from both the perspective of an academic and
practitioner. I worked as a Teaching Fellow and Researcher at Harvard University on
projects related to Social Entrepreneurship, and I took advantage of outstanding
opportunities in the Boston area to launch numerous start-up projects as a founder or
consultant in education, health care, environmental management and related fields.
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DM: What is your business?
JS: The human capital flow for the start-up community is extremely inefficient. The team
creation process is dominated by a relatively small number of serial entrepreneurs and
venture investors. There is a large latent talent pool of professionals with ideas to start
companies or eager to provide advice for new ventures with no way to substantively get
actively involved in such pursuits. This is exacerbated by the fact that social communities
of trust such as university alumni networks do not exist to help entrepreneurs and
innovators; they primarily exist to generate donations and are a one-way communication
tool. Online platforms such as LinkedIn have been created in recent years in an attempt to
assist all business professionals but the trust factor is low, and has largely replaced the
White Pages as the first hit when a person is Googled. I Co-Founded Incunation to serve
as a private venture community of trust where entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial
professionals can efficiently find high-quality talent and ventures, and is populated as
members invite their qualified friends, academic cohorts and colleagues. The aim is to
provide the right mixture of trust and dynamic social technology to save time and more
efficiently manage human capital for start-ups.
DM: How does Boston help you?
JS: The Boston area is a thinking city, and is called ‘Athens of America’ for good reason.
Just like the most promising students from Greater Greece traveled to Plato’s Academy in
Athens, motivated academics and other professionals from all over the globe move here to
study, research, teach, work, and start new companies. Furthermore, I can efficiently
travel on the T to Back Bay, South End, Financial District, Kendall, and Harvard in
minutes, never having to deal with hour-long commutes. As I’m in the talent management
business, Boston provides me with a fresh supply of innovative and international talent
and ventures.
DM: Why do you serve as a BWP Connector?
JS: Because the Boston community has been so good to me, I felt it was incumbent upon
me to assist newcomers with meeting the right people for their own business, social and
cultural development. In the same respect, meeting new, interesting and driven people
helps me personally and with my own business development.
DM: In what ways are you active as a Connector?
JS: I am an evangelist for the human capital present in Boston. I often mention BWP to
friends and colleagues new to the area and connect them with the BWP Management or
BWP Connectors. I attend BWP events and also write articles for the BWP Ideas &
Innovation Blog.
DM: What else should people know about you and/or your work?
JS: I’m an artist at heart; for ten years in my youth I was a sculptor. I feel that building
new companies or writing an article is still in keeping with my sculptor roots, only that
when you work with stone or clay, it’s a private act of creation between you and your static
medium. Working in the real world and dealing with the complexities of new and
unfamiliar people and places, accounting for world events and building new organizations
designed to solve fluid human problems is challenging and I find this intellectually
