by Taylor Gray

    I felt like I was stepping into the city’s parallel present day as I walked into the building at 515 Girod Street between Camp and Magazine.  Everything was sleek and contemporary: large glass windows and doors, artsy flower wallpaper, and uncomfortable “ergonomic” waiting room chairs.  It was like being in a future where old and dusty is no longer cool and “vintage.”
    I was standing in the Intellectual Property (IP), a privately-owned office building that opened up in April to house a growing number of innovative and technology-oriented companies.  “This isn’t the future,” I thought. “This is Austin, TX.”
    The IP could be a poster child for a hipper, greener, newer New Orleans.  For instance, the building is dog-friendly, and the walls are literally dry erase boards.  Plus, my tour guide, the marketing director for Idea Village, seemed to be wearing a lot of UT tan.  Admittedly though, I was looking for the Austin similarities at this point.
    In truth, the IP could become the poster child for much more than hipness.  In the minds of the nearly 120 executives and employees who inhabit the IP, there is a “perfect storm” to create a new entrepreneurial sector that will change what it means to be a New Orleanian.
    The IP is located in the old McGlinchey Stafford building, right in the heart of downtown New Orleans.  Many of the businesses that operate in it are, to say the least, unconventional.  For example, Turbosquid is a locally-owned 3D imaging company that specializes in hosting a forum-like media database, where aspiring and established graphic designers can exchange ideas, images, and products.  The Idea Village is a company whose sole purpose is to “identify, support, and retain entrepreneurial talent in New Orleans by providing business resources to high-impact ventures.”
    To many people, these companies may seem vague or irrelevant.  However, to realize the impact they can have on a community, one need only read about Silicon Alley, where a small group of internet and technology companies in New York City in the 1990s became a hotbed for success after the internet bust.  Closer to home, Austin, TX started with essentially the same concept that the founders of the IP are employing: a fully serviceable innovation and technology sector in one building.
    Conventional wisdom says that there is a massive difference between what a struggling city like New Orleans has to offer and what technology hubs like Austin, New York, Boston, and San Francisco have to offer.  “Those are wealthy cities,” anyone off the street might say.  However, a deeper wisdom would say that New Orleans has all the ingredients that made the aforementioned cities such big entrepreneurial successes.
    According to Tim Williamson, President and Co-founder of the Idea Village, New Orleans possesses, among other things, a university system and a creative culture.  New Orleans is also a “worldwide brand.”  “The good news is that the foundation is there,” Williamson says.
    A budding entrepreneurial community requires more for success though.  Primarily, it needs access to financial capital.  The founders of the IP contend that the key to supporting such access is physical providing “innovative spaces.”  These spaces can connect companies with the entrepreneurial talent in the community.
    The IP will provide precisely such innovative spaces.  In addition to housing over a dozen locally-founded companies, the building is complete with a community workout facility and a soon-to-open restaurant and bar called Capdeville, where building inhabitants and total outsiders can meet, greet, eat, and drink.
    The concept is simple.  The businesses in the IP, while generally different, can share ideas and provide services with one another to ensure each other’s success.  In essence, the IP operates with a down-the-hall philosophy, where a company’s greatest allies are literally only a short walk away.
    “Our philosophy is ‘pay it forward,’” declared Tim Williamson, as he toured me around the IP.  “So if I help you, I don’t charge you.  But if you succeed, then you have to pay it forward to someone else.”  As it turns out, the artsy flower wallpaper was a pay-it-forward favor.  Williamson would go on to tell me, “This is not just an office space.”