The importance of human connection cannot be overstated, especially these days. Ken Fairbanks, an Innovation Advisor, mentor and frequent collaborator at UCI Beall Applied Innovation, has spent most of his personal and professional life developing and maintaining relationships and connections with people–something he believes is key to startup success and as an individual.
Fairbank’s belief in connection formed early. His father worked in business development with IBM which made an impression.
“He was very successful, and I was always impressed with his ability to connect with employees and develop personal relationships with his accounts,” said Fairbanks.
During high school, Fairbanks started a baseball league for young children and ran a summer physical education program for his local elementary school. After high school, Fairbanks took what he considers a very formative job with Fuller Brush, a cleaning products company, selling door-to-door.
“It taught [me] a lot, going door to door, [about] …rejection, being able to walk up to strangers, it really helped with my ability to go out and just meet people,” said Fairbanks.
After college, Fairbanks took a business development position with Hewlett Packard (HP). Fairbanks started at ground level, but his career accelerated quickly. He realized he had access to many smart individuals to learn from and made a practice of taking on mundane tasks in exchange for joining them on sales calls.
“It [HP] was a great opportunity to leverage the different skill sets of others to build my own,” said Fairbanks. “So many of my peers would sit at their desks and just wait for something to come to them, and their careers didn’t move as quickly as mine did, because I went out and sought it.”
His curiosity and willingness to take initiative has driven Fairbank’s career, leading him to new companies and into new areas of business where he developed expertise in business strategy and trend identification, leadership, development, marketing and investing, working for early pioneers in the Internet of Things (IoT) space, such as SmartLabs, a smart lighting company, as well as The Duchossois Group, a private investment firm.
As an Innovation Advisor, a free mentorship program available to startups in the Wayfinder program at UCI Beall Applied Innovation, Fairbanks shares his experience with startups, often encouraging them to take more initiative.
“I try to tell teams around here that they tend to sit back a little bit and wait for things to happen; for people to come to them,” said Fairbanks. “One of the lessons I think for all of them [startups] I try to instill is to go bug people. Bug, bug, bug.”
Wayfinder graduate and UC Irvine alum Patrick Dumas, founder and CEO of Waterborne Skateboards, worked with Fairbanks for over a year to develop his business model for his unique skateboard company. Dumas cites Fairbanks as the catalyst for nearly every significant business relationship Waterborne has depended on for its success.
“I think that I could write a book about Ken Fairbanks and human connection. We’ve worked closely together since 2016, and it’s been such a privilege and a life-changing experience. Ken patiently helped me understand every facet of starting and running a business from accounting to ethics,” said Dumas.
Dumas continues to work with Fairbanks to this day.
In 2020, COVID-19 took a jab at human connection – eliminating face-to-face exchanges. Ever-adapting, Fairbanks acknowledges that some benefits sprung out of the pandemic like remaining flexible in scheduling with startups and video conferencing allowing Fairbanks to work with more startups. The negative impact was much greater, explains Fairbanks.
“Our startups did not interact, all that sharing that would go on – ‘what attorney are you using? what research did you do? how did you get around this?’ — went away. They weren’t able to leverage one another. They lost aspects of assimilation into the culture and developing an affinity for this place [Cove @ UCI], and for one another… if you don’t have any relationship, it’s easy to walk away. You haven’t built that bond,” said Fairbanks.
Moving forward Ken is optimistic about the lessons learned and the big takeaways from the pandemic’s once stranglehold over in-person events. He hopes that building deeper human connections and integrating it into the new working environments will be a flagship for change.
“We can’t go back to working the way we did before. Out of any experience, you want to take the good and integrate it; make whatever you had even better, that’s what the opportunity is,” said Fairbanks. “The challenge is to grow and not ignore what we’ve learned. We can’t just say ‘we’re going back to how it used to be ‘cause it was the good old days.’ We have to integrate these experiences to make better programs..”
Connect with an Innovation Advisor. Learn more about programs Fairbanks is involved with including I-Corps, MIE, New Venture Competition.
Also visit Zotx, a new platform to connect with UCI students, alumni, faculty and staff with our local community to build startups and support each other.
All Graphics & Photos: Julie Kennedy