Innovation Lunch with Bob Ferguson

If you haven't come across Fairfield before, it's a town of just 10,000 people on the Iowa prairie that has become arguably the most celebrated small-city innovation hub in the world. It was recently named one of the Top 7 Intelligent Communities of 2025 by the Intelligent Community Forum, competing against 430 cities globally, and it has six times the number of small businesses per capita compared to the average US city. For a small, geographically isolated community (something like Guernsey!).

Bob is the person most credited with championing and articulating that story on the world stage. He's an entrepreneur and social innovator who built Fairfield's international application almost single-handedly, organises a weekly entrepreneur meetup called Traction Thursdays, and was recently elected to the city council. He understands from lived experience how a small, remote communities can deliberately build and sustain an innovation culture and how to measure and export that story. That feels like exactly the kind of conversation we should be having here.