OOPs 2.0: NMC Reimagines Its Innovation & Entrepreneurship Office

Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) is rebranding its Office of Possibilities, a program focused on entrepreneurship and innovation, with the goal of increasing awareness and engagement on campus. While the program, better known as “OOPs,” has spun off multiple success stories at NMC and across the community, college leaders say its identity has proven muddy and confusing for actual NMC students.

Formed in 2022 out of a 20Fathoms workshop, OOPs became “northern Michigan’s front porch for innovation,” offering weekly meetings where local “entrepreneurs and changemakers” could get together, network, and explore ideas together. Meetings started at NMC, then moved to the Grove Community Incubator at Commongrounds. College involvement continued, but NMC leaders increasingly felt the program was too far removed from students.

Speaking to The Ticker a year ago, Jason Slade, NMC’s vice president of strategic initiatives, teased the idea for “OOPs 2.0,” which he described as “an OOPs for education.” While Slade praised OOPs for bringing a spirit of innovation to the college – including a recurring pitch event for students to seek scientific research dollars and the purchase of a 3D masonry printer for the construction technology program – he saw opportunity “to integrate more of that entrepreneurial mindset” into the college as a whole.

“Over the course of the past year, we have been talking a lot about that ‘OOPs for Education’ concept,” says Lisa Rabaut, who joined NMC’s strategic initiatives office last November as its innovation and strategic growth project manager. “When OOPs was first launched, the NMC side of OOPs and the community side of OOPs functioned as one. The NMC OOPs team and Nick Beadleson, executive director of the Grove Community Incubator, co-hosted weekly networking meetings, open to anyone in the community.”

Recently, though, the Grove and NMC pieces of OOPs have become more distinct from one another. Grove continues to host weekly meetings, maintaining the original spirit of OOPs as a place to convene local changemakers. NMC’s Office of Possibilities, meanwhile, has refocused itself “on educational opportunities and impactful, innovative ideas that benefit campus,” Rabaut tells The Ticker.

“It has become confusing for NMC's office name to share the name of a weekly community meeting,” Rabaut says.

Going forward, Grove will continue hosting weekly meetings under the OOPs name, but NMC will rebrand its program as the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Beyond just creating some distance between what Grove is doing and what NMC is doing, Rabaut hopes the name change will make it clearer to NMC students what the office actually does.

“‘Office of Possibilities’ is an ambiguous name for a collegiate office focused specifically on innovation and entrepreneurship activities,” Rabaut explains. “Current and prospective students who are interested in innovation and entrepreneurship would not intuitively know to search for ‘possibilities,’ online or in person, and might assume NMC does not offer those resources and services. I was even informed by colleagues from the Office of Student Life that many students were not aware they could access OOPs support and funding; they were under the impression OOPs assisted community members who were interested in entrepreneurship, but not students.”

To correct those misconceptions, Rabaut plans to be “a lot more deeply integrated into student life” during the coming school year. She’ll hit campus events, speak to classes, connect with student organizations, forge relationships with the instructors behind NMC’s business courses, and even join student committees, all to raise awareness on campus about the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Her hope is to see more student entrepreneurs knocking on her door to learn about available resources, more projects submitted for NMC’s student pitch events, and more NMC students finding their way to things like Grove’s OOPs meetings.

Speaking of Grove, Beadleston stresses that the door will always be open at OOPs for anyone from the NMC community. He says Grove has convened an OOPs meeting every Tuesday since January 2023, and will continue to do so going forward, marking its 200th consecutive OOPs Tuesday gathering on October 27.

“NMC’s timely decision will not change Grove’s Tuesday OOPs gatherings,” Beadleston says. “OOPs will continue at Grove under its original name, with the same weekly rhythm and commitment to being an open, relationship-driven space for entrepreneurs and changemakers. NMC has been a valued partner, and we’re excited that the college sees enough promise in the model to consider developing a new iteration aligned with its own students and strategic priorities.”

Rabaut, Slade, and Diana Fairbanks, NMC’s associate vice president of strategic communications and change initiatives, will present the new Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship to the college’s Board of Trustees at a 5:30pm meeting tomorrow afternoon.