Colorado Inventor Showcase honors innovators: making headway into the future

ColoradoBiz, Jan, 2008 by Eric Peterson

After leaving IBM in 1991, Frey consulted and looked for the "right niche" for a few years before starting the DaVinci Institute in 1997. A decade later, he's been dubbed the "Dean of Futurists" by more than one major newspaper.

"I wanted a community," said Frey, 53. "And that's pretty much what the DaVinci Institute is."

As Frey's reputation has grown, the future-oriented think tank now puts on about 35 events a year in metro Denver. The Institute's monthly "Night with a Futurist" and "Startup Junkie Underground" events have become staples on the local high-tech calendar, and special events--like the Colorado Inventor Showcase and the upcoming Googlecom 2008 later this year, both co-sponsored by ColoradoBiz--are semi-annual happenings. The institute also puts on one "Boot Camp" a month on topics ranging from podcasting to rebuilding New Orleans.

Frey also writes numerous articles about technology and edits the intriguingly eclectic Impact Lab blog (www.impactlab.com), highlighted by Popular Science as among the "top five science blogs in the known universe."

In the longer term, Frey hopes to open the "Museum of Future Inventions" in metro Denver, in which he envisions 64 exhibits, each highlighting an area that needs innovation. A title sponsor for each will offer an X-Prize-like incentive of $10 million or more to the inventor who leaps each hurdle in innovation.

"Americans, we're training from birth to compete," Frey said. "In the technological arena, however, we don't have any finish lines out there." Finish lines in the form of incentive prizes "would help focus our energy," he said.

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Wil McCarthy, a science-fiction and science-fact writer and a contributing editor of Wired magazine, says Frey has the ability to cut through the clutter of the here and now to visualize the future.

"A lot of prominent thinkers make the mistake of focusing on what will be possible in the future, not on what people actually want or what they'll put up with," said McCarthy, who is also president of RavenBrick, a tech startup. "Tom tends to do things backwards, starting from a desirable goal and then trying to connect it back to something happening in the world today. It's an effective strategy."

So what does a futurist's average workday look like, if there is such a thing? "I spend a lot of time researching almost everything," said Frey, who had 70 speaking engagements all over the world in 2007 and has a book, "Nanotechnology: The Future" (Taylor & Francis), slated for release in February. "I don't actually view it as work. The primary goal is to keep ahead of the curve."

And in 2008, "ahead of the curve" is a moving target, Frey added. "I just read that e-mail is just for old people," he said with a laugh.

ONLINE: www.davinciinstitute.com

BY ERIC PETERSON

photography by mark manger