If you take a walk through the halls of the Cambridge Innovation Center’s (CIC) new 62,000-square-foot building in Providence, you’re bound to stumble across bright young minds that are not only perfecting products and technologies of today, but laying the groundwork of tomorrow’s economy.

At its simplest concept, CIC is a place where any business – from individual entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 companies – can rent an adaptable work space that gives them access to 21 private conference rooms, 16 soundproof phone booths and over 180 different possible office configurations for whatever works best for them. Space is rented on a 30-day basis and can be upscaled or downsized at will, providing flexibility for companies that may be blossoming or more volatile.

But talk to Rebecca Webber, a 2005 Cranston High School West graduate and former staffer for then-Treasurer Gina Raimondo – and now the general manager of CIC Providence – and you’ll quickly see that the mission behind the center goes far beyond simply providing a nice place for a business to set up shop.

“This space helps a smaller company compete,” Webber said. “We are constantly driving people to the point of convergence so that they’re having conversations that help to accelerate their ideas and ultimately grow their business or to start new businesses. Because our goal is to get companies to expand while they’re here, and then to hopefully launch them on their way and to help promote economic development more broadly in the state of Rhode Island.”

Webber points out that renting a space at CIC Providence doesn’t only provide access to the on-site amenities – like stocked community kitchens, game rooms, private rooms, free phone and internet service and a dedicated mailing address – it plugs businesses into the larger CIC global network.

“If your client is flying into Logan, and they can’t make it down to Providence for one reason or another, you can absolutely go up to Boston and take that meeting. Similarly, if you have a prospect in Philadelphia or St. Louis whom you’re courting, you can happily go out to those offices. If you’re a snow bird, you can head down to Miami in the event that that works,” she said. “What we’re really providing is a service, and that service is incredibly flexible.”

Adam Alpert is one of those aforementioned talented individuals who just happened to be mingling in one of the CIC’s common kitchen areas – one of those “points of convergence” Webber was referring to – during a tour of the facility last week. A New York native and Brown University graduate, he has developed an app called Pangea, which plugs employers into a comprehensive database filled with work-hungry college students seeking internship and freelance opportunities.

Alpert, and others like him, are occupying the Providence CIC until October as part of the Mass Challenge program, an entrepreneurial accelerator that gives upstart companies a boost in launching and growing their ideas, with the notion that some of these entrepreneurs will become the economic champions of tomorrow and, ideally, stay in Rhode Island.

Just a short walk from the Mass Challenge office is the Providence software engineering operations office for Zumper, a fast-rising San Francisco-based rental property aggregator that has recently been infused with a hefty capital investment to continue its own development.

Despite the prevalence of future-forward industries, such as app developers, occupying CIC, Webber makes a point to mention that CIC caters to a broad variety of businesses. A company-wide policy only restricts access to its facilities for two types of endeavors – pornography and gambling.

“Strip poker is no good here,” Webber said with a smile.

Outside of those industries, CIC supports every range of business, from a lone entrepreneur looking for a dedicated work space – who can rent a “hot desk” for $300 a month, which provides access to the full range of CIC resources in a large, bullpen room with up to 61 other sole proprietors sharing the space – to the largest of the large companies, such as FM Global, Apple and Facebook, which have rented space from other CIC facilities in the past to set up new branches of their extensive operations.

Opening in August and ready to celebrate with a grand opening party on Friday, CIC Providence is the latest of 10 CIC centers, which started with one office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and now hosts more than 1,800 companies in five U.S. cities and an additional spot in the economic European hub of Rotterdam in Holland. By 2020, they look to be operating in 10 cities worldwide.

So, why Providence, especially when CIC has such a strong presence already in the bustling metropolis just north?

“CIC tends to locate in places where there is talent, places where there is strong institutional support and places where they perceive to be opportunity. And it’s an exciting time to be in Providence,” Webber said. “I think we’re giving entrepreneurs an opportunity to stay in Providence because we are offering this global network and localized site. I think we’re also starting a conversation just by virtue of being here. We’re signaling that Providence has arrived, that you don’t necessarily need to go to a larger metropolitan area up or down Route 95 – that you can stay here.”

There’s no doubting Webber’s enthusiasm for sparking economic growth in Rhode Island. She calls herself “one of the proudest” Rhode Islanders you’ll ever meet, and it’s almost cosmically fitting that she finds herself heading up an economic generator in the heart of Providence’s Jewelry District today. Her late father ran a costume jewelry shop at 1924 Elmwood Ave. in Warwick for 30 years.

“I spent lots of Saturdays of my childhood carting earrings and going to the jewelry shows down in Devol Square,” she recalled. “To be part of the resurrection of this particular neighborhood and the resurrection of the new knowledge economy in Rhode Island is really sentimentally important to me and really gratifying.”