Innovation Interface at MIT

As a not-for-profit institution, the group address today's innovation crisis by innovating for growth while education the next generation of innovators.

Innovation requires an environment in which scientific and technical advance collides with real market needs and practical implementation possibilities. Atrophy of such integrated environments over the past two decades has left a gap in the innovation ecosystem.

Centrally positioned in today's university-industry gap, this group address industrial and economic innovation needs with top-talent teams composed of professional innovators, faculty and students operating in an environment optimized for innovation freedom and focus. Partnering with corporations, small business, and universities and government, we create a more effective innovation environment.

Expertise lies in efficiently performing the innovation process that iterates between uncertain. Technologies, un certain Markets and uncertain implementation possibilities to converge on valuable innovation opportunities for top-line growth, new business creating and the seeding of new economic growth sectors.

The iterative innovation process can be summarized as reducing risk through deep learning across multiple uncertain Technologies, Markets and Implementation possibilities, while simultaneously incorporating rapid feed back between all three categories. Continuous risk evaluations and reformulations drive multiple iterations to converge on innovation.

The Innovation Interface group is affiliated with two of the world's leading and highly complementary research universities -- Cornell University and MIT. Present on both campuses, we can innovate with teams at either university or with joint teams.

Focused innovation environmental benefits the overall innovation ecosystem beyond generating high-impact innovation outcomes for growth and hands-on mentoring of the next generation of innovators during Innovation Projects. Innovating across many different areas promotes application-rich thinking on campus and enables yet deeper insights into the innovation process. We bring these benefits to a larger student body and the university communities through participation in teaching and through organizing seminars with corporate involvement.

The Innovation Interface Group custom-design the professionally managed Innovation Projects together with industrial partners, revealing growth opportunities beyond the usual horizon of corporate development activities. Although flexible in design, Innovation Projects are often performed by a multi-disciplinary team over the course of one year at an approximate cost of one full-time equivalent industrial researcher.

NOTE: Guy DiCicco is Executive Director of Innovation Interface at Cornell University.