Bridging digital divide: Stepping toward inclusive innovation in Chattanooga

The new Edney Innovation Center - a 10-story symbol of Chattanooga's advance into the highly-lucrative technology sector - is advertised as a "connecting point, support base and catalyst for the local entrepreneurial ecostyem." But when Tia Capps' office moved into the gleaming, San Francisco-esque interior, she couldn't help but feel a disconnect.

Each week she and her co-workers at Co.Lab, a small-business incubator once housed on Main Street, met with would-be entrepreneurs excited about all the Gig city could offer them.

Just a few feet across the street, though, residents coming and going from Patten Towers, a historic hotel turned public housing site, reminded her of all those who saw little opportunity in the same town.

It was an embarrassing juxtaposition often noted by activists concerned with rising childhood poverty and persistent racial inequality. Many asked why was the city so fully embracing an industry that most locals weren't prepared to compete in?

So Capps did something others at the Edney Center hadn't. She talked her colleagues into joining her, and together, they walked across the street.

Most of the elderly and disabled living in Patten Towers didn't have seed money saved to start a small business. Few would be considered valuable contacts in a professional network. And it was easy to assume those living in the low-income high-rise would have little interest in Co.Lab services.

Still, Capps said attending and supporting bi-weekly bingo in the mezzanine of Patten Towers has been an invaluable experience. Later, employees at the nonprofit Causeway joined them.

For one, the lessons learned from conversations with residents have served as a gut punch to her formerly narrow worldview. But she also feels the shared experiences are shaping her and her co-workers into more compassionate, more fulfilled and more competitive, culturally-competent professionals.

"We don't know what we are doing at Patten Towers," she said. "We are playing bingo, but maybe, just maybe, we will learn about the people there and what they want, and we might find something that we can help with.

"It's making us think about where the gaps in programming are across the community. We need to know what the barriers are because the more people who can start businesses the better we are as a local economy."

And Capps is just one disruptor working to bring Chattanooga's emerging technology sector, as well as the wider business community, face to face with those long marginalized.

To increase diversity among area businesses, employers seeking minority candidates need to actually seek them, said Marty Lowe, an African-American and human relations professional who co-owns Main Street Innovations with wife Donna.

Unfortunately, many businesses fail to get their information into the hands of minority candidates because they have no relationships - professional or otherwise - in the local black or Hispanic communities. They also have little understanding of them, said Lowe.

For example, many local African Americans are active and connect with one another on Facebook.; yet organizations often opt for billboard advertisements instead. Low-income, inner city residents often don't trust messages coming from institutions; yet there has been little local investment in boots-on-the-ground-style outreach that can serve to build trust and buy-in. And marketing around the new Innovation District is an example of this communication breakdown, he said.

Donna Lowe said she and her husband often talk with local minorities with talents and bright ideas who have no idea how to stake a claim in the Innovation District. Many more don't know the Innovation District exists, she said.

"Start-up Week and those types of events don't represent the city," she said. "There needs to be a focus on the under served. We saw a need and thought, 'Let's meet a need.'"

So the Lowes have decided to take word of the Innovation District and its support for entrepreneurs on the road and into the city's overlooked neighborhoods. Each month they hope to host a networking event called CHA Innovation Nights to showcase minorities, women, veterans and the disabled who have felt left out of Chattanooga's economic growth.

And they plan to invite business owners and executives from for-profit and nonprofit organizations to come and mingle and begin building new social networks that can benefit their bottom line.

"We don't just want minorities and veterans to pitch their solutions and themselves," said Marty Lowe. "We want decision makers to come out and engage the community. What better way to say, 'We do want to do business with you.'"

The Lowes also plan, in partnership with Co.Lab and several other nonprofits, to visit each neighborhood association and share information about the business opportunities available to them and their neighbors. For both efforts, however, they say they are in need of more partners willing to support the efforts through sponsorship or attendance.

"Say you live in Alton Park and you get invited to CHA Innovation nights, well you have to get acclimated to the idea of being included," said Donna Lowe. "A grassroots effort to build trust is needed first.

"You have to be intentional," she added. "If you are expecting these individuals to just show up, you are sadly mistaken."

James McKissic, who heads Chattanooga's Office of Multicultural Affairs, said he supports the Lowes' idea.

His office wants to improve its outreach, he said, and Mayor Andy Berke's Minority Business Task Force, which Marty Lowe sits on, is surveying minority businesses and working to come up with recommendations for ways the city can advance equity, diversity and inclusion.

Outside of his official role, McKissic said he is supporting aspiring blacks through a giving circle traditional in African-American communities, he started with some of his black, professional friends and colleagues.

The Sankofa Fund for Civic Engagement was launched last year "to educate its members about the benefits of collective philanthropy, increase awareness of local needs, make investments in organizations that are directly impacting African-American children, youth and families, and create a legacy of giving in African-American communities as an effective vehicle for social change," according to the organization's website.

And this year, the group, which pools members' donations, gave five grants to local organizations.

Chattanooga also has benefited by the growth of Tennessee's biggest business incubator on the North Shore. The Chattanooga/Hamilton County Business Development Center, or INCubator, houses about 70 businesses in different stages of initial growth in its 127,000-square-foot facility. Over the past three decades, the center has "graduated" more than 530 businesses.

The INCubator is also home to the Chattanooga office of the Tennessee Small Business Development Center, which serves a nine-county area with a variety of business training and assistance programs. Last year, minority-owned businesses comprised 39 percent of the center's clients, 46 percent of the center's clients were women and 8 percent were veterans, according to Lynn Chesnutt, the center's managing director.

Contact Joan McClane at 423-757-6601 or at jmcclane@timesfreepress.com.