The Next Idea The Incubator Kitchen at the Grand Rapids Downtown Market is helping people with an idea for a food product or business turn their dreams into reality without risking their life savings. The Incubator Kitchen is a full-sized commercial kitchen where hopeful food entrepreneurs can get help with business planning and the licensing required to legally produce their products and sell to the public.

The Next Idea Is there a “state of mind” that aids innovation and creativity? Think for a moment about the last time you were totally immersed in a hobby, music, or sport. Things just seemed to flow, time became imperceptible, and everything seemed almost effortless. Might you have experienced this when writing? Running or gardening? Creating poetry, music, or dancing? Or even tinkering? Are such times rare or non-existent in your life? These experiences of “flow” are rocket fuel for innovation

The Next Idea Think about a hot August day. Your car has been sitting out in a parking lot for hours and hours. Think of how hot it is when you get back inside and touch that steering wheel. What if you could take all of that solar energy and use it for something besides burning your hands?

The Next Idea If you’re old enough, you might remember Schoolhouse Rock, a series of musical films that helped kids learn. Emmanuel Smith is “ Mr. E in the D ,” and he’s updating that concept by using hip-hop to teach kids math.

The Next Idea We live in a world of stereotypes, as disappointing as that can be sometimes. Here’s one of them: black women never take any guff from anyone and they are always strong. No one is always strong. Bad things happen in life, and we all experience tragedies. So when an African-American woman is struggling with loss, struggling with grief, where can she turn?

The Next Idea Building community to end poverty. That's the mission of Circles USA . It's a long-term effort that's all about empowering people of low-income to move out of poverty. Low-income participants are the program's leaders. They pair up with an middle-to-high-income ally. The idea is to gain resources and fight poverty by building circles of influence.

The Next Idea Homelessness has a different look in a city than it does in rural areas, and somehow it feels easier to overlook. Dennis Van Kampen , executive director and CEO of the Grand Rapids nonprofit Mel Trotter Ministries , joined Stateside to talk about a pilot program aimed at helping homeless families in rural Cedar Springs, and take on the problem of rural homelessness more broadly.

The Next Idea Caring for a baby takes up a huge amount of time. Yet one mom managed to find the time to come up with an idea for a product, pitch it in entrepreneurial competitions, win, and make her idea reality: The Pumpndo . The slogan? "Because mom life doesn't stop when you pump."

The Next Idea Baseball and opera usually don’t end up in the same sentence. But for the next year, they will in Detroit. Next May, the Michigan Opera Theatre will be producing Daniel Sonenberg’s The Summer King , an opera about Negro League’s baseball player Josh Gibson. The CEO of the Michigan Opera Theatre Wayne Brown joined Stateside to tell us about a partnership between the Michigan Opera Theatre and the Detroit Tigers , called Take Me Out to the Opera.

The Next Idea Helping underserved young people embrace education, get into college and go on to be world-class citizens is the mission of a program called FATE. It's operated as part of the cause-based clothing company Merit Goodness . Give Merit Executive Director Kuhu Saha and 2016 FATE graduate Asha Stewart joined Stateside to share how FATE provides a space where students can create aspirations.