Cattle farms, dirt roads and amber waves of grain. Each are associated with the plains of the Midwest, but one company in small-town Baldwin City is trying to change that.

Baker alumnus Mike Bosch, CEO and founder of the digital agency called the Reflective Group, is hoping to switch the name of the Midwest from the wheat prairie to the “silicon prairie.”

“I now believe small towns are the best place to innovate,” Bosch, a Dallas native, said. “There’s a higher degree of trust and transparency in small towns, which is critical in start-ups.”

His start-up is on the verge of completing its biggest project yet. The Reflective Group team has made an impact already on the community by designing an online enrollment for the local school district and its own personal phone system called ‘Ello Tello, which Osawatomie uses for its 911 dispatch service.

The group’s newest development is called RG Fiber. The design, similar to Google Fiber in its Internet speed, is aimed specifically at small towns.

“When (the company) grew bigger, we found that we couldn’t keep operating on a slow Internet,” Bosch said. “So we found that we had three options: one, stay small; two, leave town; or three, do it ourselves.”

And on Wednesday, it broke ground for RG Fiber, signaling that option three was the route the group decided to take.

The official launch of RG Fiber was held outside Mabee Hall, with many Kansas leaders and dignitaries in attendance. Gov. Sam Brownback was present at the event to show his support and interest in the venture.

Brownback thinks the launch is proof that Kansas can be the home of innovative ideas and compete with a global-based market. Brownback applauds the work of the Reflective Group and hopes to see it continue to grow “right here in Kansas.”

“This is a great thing that is happening,” Brownback said. “We have local entrepreneurs seeing a local need and filling it … One of my objectives in being governor is making Kansas the best place in America to do two things: the first is being a great place to raise a family, the second is to grow a small business.”

President Lynne Murray spoke as well, welcoming everyone to the university and expressing her appreciation of the project that will make Baker the first university in Kansas with full gigabit access. This will extend to the sports complexes as well, allowing full streaming from athletic events.

“From an educational standpoint, the potential that RG Fiber brings to Baker is immense,” Murray said. “We’re first in many things, and I’m very proud to add this to our list of firsts.”

The benefits extend further than the campus, though. Lisa Large, the telemedicine manager at Children’s Mercy Hospital, hit on the benefits of telemedicine for small towns and how RG Fiber will help advance its development. These benefits range from allowing parents to interact with students in a nurse’s office to in-home monitoring, which allows the hospital to be “proactive instead of reactive.”

“Telemedicine is bringing medicine to you, wherever you are, with whatever device you currently have in your backpack or in your pocket,” Large said. “It’s a beautiful thing, but it’s limited by the speed of your network.”

Large said that the hospital is thrilled to start work with RG Fiber.

“We look forward to the collaboration and the opportunity to work with you,” Large said.

The Reflective Group has been working on this project for nearly two years and hopes to be fully-functioning to the public by spring of 2015, especially to its first customer, Baker University. Bosch said the service will be 100 times faster for consumers and offered at a very competitive rate. The group will also provide high-definition television services for an additional cost.

Although many wonder why Bosch and the Reflective Group would take on such a capitalistic venture in such a small town, Bosch said he loves this city and what it offers to not only businesses, but residents as well.

“When I was off in big cities, pursuing my corporate dream, it was the generosity that people here showed my wife that had a profound impact on me,” Bosch said. “Through that process, I became a believer in the moral, competitive advantage of small-town America.”