What was then.

To tell the entrepreneurial story of how the cable industry foundation was built and inspire the next generation of innovators, pioneers from the cable television industry partnered with The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) in 1985. Originally called the National Cable Television Center and Museum (NCTCM), this hub for inspiration and education originated in a classroom building on the Penn State campus. The original architects wanted to ensure that, while their center would house a library, museum, and oral histories of the industry, it would also be the place where cable employees and leaders could gather for training and continuous learning. It soon became a space for ideas to be exchanged, innovations to take off, and leaders to find inspiration.

The NCTCM relocated to Denver, Colorado—“the Cable Capitol”—in the mid 1990s and eventually found its home on the University of Denver campus. In 2001, we opened the Alan Gerry Cable Center Building as a private nonprofit. Though separate from the University, both institutions share many of the same industry donors and patrons, which laid the foundation for a very friendly and supportive partnership. A year later, we officially rebranded the NCTCM as The Cable Center to align with our forward-looking mission of providing a central place for education, training, and mentorship for innovators and leaders in the cable and connectivity industry while maintaining the most extensive collection of industry accounts and objects.

The rebranding to The Cable Center allowed us to deepen our commitment to advancing our industry’s greatest source of ideas—its people—offering programs on innovation, leadership, and customer experience management, among many other subjects. We hosted a Cable Boot Camp in conjunction with Women In Cable and Telecommunications, collaborated with C-SPAN on a long-running political science class, presented panels at trade shows here and abroad, published books, sponsored Cable Mavericks lectures at colleges all over the country, hosted the industry’s customer experience management initiative, and built an impressive library and archive of objects and oral histories to document the evolution of the industry for researchers of all kinds. We’re proud of these accomplishments and the impact we’ve made on inspired leaders and driven innovators amongst our graduates and participants.

The launch of Intrapreneurship Academy in 2017 started as a single professional development course, and in a few short years expanded to a series of extensive leadership development courses for industry standouts. Just as the original industry entrepreneurs launched an industry and legacy through innovation, hard work, and grit, Intrapreneurship Academy empowers today’s intrapreneurs to evoke that same entrepreneurial spirit within their organizations, pushing boundaries, accelerating innovation, and driving our industry ecosystem forward. Our graduates finish Intrapreneurship Academy courses prepared to implement new skills and lead with confidence as intrapreneurs who work together to shape what’s next. Today, we complement our coursework with thought leadership programming—both here in our facility and online—and an unmatched educational content library, ensuring the mentorship and learning our founders imagined.