Kendall Square has been described as “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” The Boston Globe recently described the Kendall area, “the beating heart of biotech. And if Kendall is the beating heart, then MIT must be the aorta. …” But the discoveries from MIT extend far beyond biotech to include AI, ML, nanotechnology, advanced manufacturing, robotics, small satellites, 6G, and much more. The opportunities for interaction and cross-fertilization are unparalleled for companies and their executives that are flocking to the area, and the students and faculty of MIT, whose presence is drawing them. The close engagement of firms with MIT, spanning the full innovation cycle from basic academic research all the way to the marketplace, is enabling both MIT and firms to bring about breakthrough innovations.
Firms that intend to survive and prosper from the coming waves of innovation need to engage with MIT faculty members and students, and the stream of startups emanating from MIT’s laboratories. Yet, questions remain: How should firms do this? How do entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems actually work? What should executives be looking for? What roles should company representatives and executives embrace? How should open innovation teams be organized? To whom should these teams report and how should firms organize themselves internally to capture real value from their engagement with MIT and the surrounding MIT-Kendall Square Innovation Ecosystem?
Based upon years of groundbreaking research into the human and organizational sides of innovation, MIT faculty members and researchers, and members of MIT’s Office of Corporate Relations, will give foundational insights, and provide original and thought-provoking perspectives, into what works, and what doesn’t, engaging the MIT-Kendall Square Innovation Ecosystem.
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Karl Koster is the Executive Director of MIT Corporate Relations. MIT Corporate Relations includes the MIT Industrial Liaison Program and MIT Startup Exchange.
In that capacity, Koster and his staff work with the leadership of MIT and senior corporate executives to design and implement strategies for fostering corporate partnerships with the Institute. Koster and his team have also worked to identify and design a number of major international programs for MIT, which have been characterized by the establishment of strong, programmatic linkages among universities, industry, and governments. Most recently these efforts have been extended to engage the surrounding innovation ecosystem, including its vibrant startup and small company community, into MIT's global corporate and university networks.
Koster is also the Director of Alliance Management in the Office of Strategic Alliances and Technology Transfer (OSATT). OSATT was launched in Fall 2019 as part of a plan to reinvent MIT’s research administration infrastructure. OSATT develops agreements that facilitate MIT projects, programs and consortia with industrial, nonprofit, and international sponsors, partners and collaborators.
He is past chairman of the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), an organization that seeks to enhance the value of collaborative partnerships between universities and corporations.
He graduated from Brown University with a BA in geology and economics, and received an MS from MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to returning to MIT, Koster worked as a management consultant in Europe, Latin America, and the United States on projects for private and public sector organizations.
Randall S. Wright is a program director with MIT's Industrial Liaison Program. He manages the interface between the managements of companies, headquartered in the United States and Europe, and the senior administration and faculty of MIT.
As a program director for MIT, he convenes teams of researchers and faculty members to provide on-going emerging technology intelligence and strategic advice for the world's leading technology companies. He is a sought-after speaker, delivering keynote speeches focused on emerging technology opportunities and challenges, and counter-intuitive insights in executive panels and discussions. Randall draws on extensive experience advising executives on a range of emerging technology areas including digital transformation, big data, robotics, green buildings, water efficiency, energy storage, biofuels, advanced materials, and manufacturing. He provides navigation and recommendations on the emerging technologies and adoption landscapes critical to future business growth, as well as creation, development, and execution of programs of research between industry and MIT.
Randall has been bestowed by Federal President of Austria Dr. Heinz Fischer with the decoration Cross of Honor in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria for his "outstanding contribution to the development of relations between Austria and MIT".
Prior to MIT, Randall was a marketing manager for Pfizer, Inc., a major U.S. pharmaceuticals company. He was also a strategic planning analyst for Pennzoil Company--a Fortune 500 oil and natural resources company. Randall is an invited lecturer at Northeastern University's Executive M.B.A. Program where he lectures on innovation and corporate strategy. His column Innovation Counterculture looks at ideas and perspectives on strategy, organization, and thinking to help executives connect to the world of innovation outside their organizations and he is published regularly in Research-Technology Management, the award-winning journal of the Industrial Research Institute.
Scott Stern is the David Sarnoff Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Stern explores how innovation and entrepreneurship differ from more traditional economic activities, and the consequences of these differences for strategy and policy. His research in the economics of innovation and entrepreneurship focuses on entrepreneurial strategy, innovation-driven entrepreneurial ecosystems, and innovation policy and management. Recent studies include the impact of clusters on entrepreneurship, the role of institutions in shaping the accumulation of scientific and technical knowledge, and the drivers and consequences of entrepreneurial strategy.
Stern has worked widely with practitioners in bridging the gap between academic research and the practice of innovation and entrepreneurship. This includes advising start-ups and other growth firms in the area of entrepreneurial strategy, as well as working with governments and other stakeholders on policy issues related to competitiveness and regional performance. In recent years, Stern has developed a popular new MIT Sloan elective, Entrepreneurial Strategy, co-founded the MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program, advised the development of the Social Progress Index, and served as the lead MIT investigator on the US Cluster Mapping Project.
Stern started his career at MIT, where he taught from 1995 to 2001. Before returning to MIT in 2009, he held positions as a Professor at the Kellogg School of Management and as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Stern is the director and co-founder of the Innovation Policy Working Group at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 2005, he was awarded the Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship.
Stern holds a BA in economics from New York University and a PhD in economics from Stanford University.
Accelerating and engaging with start-ups in entrepreneurial ecosystems has become a defining priority (and challenge) for corporations, governments, and investors around the world. For start-ups, their success and impact of start-ups is often shaped by their ability to leverage and contribute to their entrepreneurial ecosystem. Building on the acceleration of Kendall Square and engagement with more than 70 entrepreneurial ecosystems throughout the world in the MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program, this talk focuses on both the opportunities (and challenges) that arises through engagement with entrepreneurial ecosystems, the role of a stakeholder approach in crafting an effective ecosystem strategy, and the ability to measure and visualize ecosystem acceleration and impact.
Peter Gloor is a research scientist at the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT Sloan working on Collaborative Innovation Networks. He is also founder and chief creative officer of the software company galaxyadvisors and an honorary professor at the University of Cologne and Jilin University, China. Previously, Gloor was a partner with Deloitte and PwC and a manager at UBS. His latest books are Sociometrics and Human Relationships and Swarm Leadership and the Collective Mind. Gloor holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Zurich and was a postdoc at MIT's Lab for Computer Science.
A Collaborative Innovation Network (COIN) is a team of self-motivated people with a collective vision, enabled by the Web, to collaborate in achieving a common goal by sharing ideas, information, and work. Hundreds of different COINs exist within the MIT Kendall Square innovation ecosystem, each representing a unique vision to shape and change our lives. Firms need to seek out and engage with members of COINs to apprehend fully the consequences of developing innovations and participate in the economic and societal movements they portend. Still, what must a firm’s executives know, and what roles must they adopt, to engage successfully with members of a COIN? In our research over the last twenty years, we have been studying Collaborative Innovation Networks at hundreds of organizations, ranging from jazz orchestras, teams of surgeons, open-source communities, and startups – including biotech at MIT-Kendall Square – to Fortune 500 firms with hundreds of thousands of employees. What we find is that entanglement of executives with members of a COIN is key to engaging. What do we mean by “entanglement”? Members of a COIN have a shared context and shared values that allows them to communicate without words, through “honest signals”, body language, and shared action. Consequently, executives need to be able to join with members of the COIN by uncritically and genuinely appreciating, and in some cases adopting, the same shared morals, characteristics, and outlooks of the COIN’s members. Entangled members of COINs operate in an environment of positive energy. Being humble, kind, and compassionate gives positive emotional energy to the COIN, while avoiding over-confident, arrogant, and egotistical behavior that will drain energy and create a toxic work environment. This talk will introduce AI-based methods to identify entangled COINs and show what executives can do to engage productively and successfully with COIN members.
Jay Paap is President of Paap Associates, a management consulting firm assisting commercial and government organizations in a broad range of business and technology development efforts, teaches in MIT's executive program, is a Fellow of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, a PDMA Certified New Product Development Professional, and former faculty member at MIT's Sloan School and Indiana University.
Jay provides clients an integrated approach to creating the innovative environment in which to grow an organization and position itself for the future. He provides services in four areas: management of innovation (e.g., roadmaps, business development strategy, new product development, and organizing the technical and business development functions), open innovation and corporate venturing (including alliances and scouting), competitive intelligence, and executive education.
Dr. Paap has been active in the management of technology for 50 years, and has consulted with commercial and government organizations for over 45 years. His clients have included 3M, Abbott, AkzoNobel, Apple, AstraZeneca, AT&T, Baker Hughes, Ballard, Baxter, BP, BHP, Boeing, British Telecom, Covidien, Dow Corning, DitchWitch, DuPont, ExxonMobil, Emerson Electric, Ford, Fonterra, Gojo, Grundfos, GSK, Henkel, Hewlett-Packard, Honda, Infinitus, J&J, Kellogg, Kimberly-Clark, Kraft, IBM, Johnson Controls, Lockheed Martin, Mars, Medtronic, Monsanto, NASA, National Research Council (Canada), Nidec, Northrup Grumman, Procter & Gamble, Public Services Electric and Gas, Reckitt Benckiser, Sandia Labs, SABIC, Saint-Gobain, SC Johnson, Shell, Steelcase, TetraPak, Unilever, and Xerox.
Prior to founding Paap Associates, Jay was Partner at Data and Strategies Group, Principal at Ampersand Ventures, Director of Corporate Consulting at Venture Economics, and co-founder and Associate Director of the Technology Management Group at Pugh-Roberts Associates. Before entering consulting, Jay was an officer in the US Air Force, responsible for developing and deploying advanced electronics equipment.
In the 90s he helped start and run the Commercialization Roundtable where senior business development managers from major companies met for three years to share experiences on innovation and develop best practices on how organizations can effectively commercialize new technology based concepts and businesses. Among the members of the Roundtable were AT&T, Digital Equipment Corporation, Dow, DuPont, GTE, IBM, MCC, Motorola, and Xerox.
Jay is a frequent speaker on the management of innovation, open innovation, new product development, and competitive intelligence, appearing in executive-level seminars throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. He has participated in programs sponsored by MIT, Cal Berkeley, Caltech, ANPEI, Business Week, The Management Roundtable, the Industrial Research Institute (IRI), Pure Insight, Moon-on-a-Stick, Martec, The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), the Strategy and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), the AMA, and Nomura Research Institute, as well as internal seminars for over 250 government, professional, and commercial organizations.
Dr. Paap received his Ph.D. from MIT's Sloan School of Management. He is a member of Strategy and Competitive Intelligence Professionals and the Product Development and Management Association; and served on the editorial advisory boards of Technology Management, The Journal of CI and Management and Competitive Intelligence Review where he served as the guest editor for a special edition on competitive technical intelligence. He co-authored "Anticipating Disruptive Innovation" which won the IRI's Maurice Holland award for the best article published in Research Technology Management.
As more firms are learning the value of engaging entrepreneurial and academic research hotspots, many have established formal scouting programs to manage these relationships. When done well, such efforts can accelerate their innovative efforts and avoid missing new technical advances affecting their development efforts. However, too often scouting programs are narrowly focused on merely finding a specific technology they feel they need, or fail to take advantage of the opportunities such relationships enable by not properly engaging. Drawing on five decades of helping companies set up and manage Technology Scouting programs, Dr. Paap will share insights into the steps organizations can take to realize the full potential of scouting.
Scott Kirsner is a journalist who writes about innovation and entrepreneurship. His “Innovation Economy” column appears Sundays in the Boston Globe, and he is also editor of the site Innovation Leader (www.innovationleader.com), which focuses on R&D, product development, corporate venturing, and new initiatives within large companies. Scott has been a regular contributor to Fast Company, BusinessWeek, Variety, and Wired. His books include Fans, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age, a technological history of Hollywood. He can be reached at scott@innovationleader.com and his Twitter handle is @ScottKirsner.
Scott Kirsner has spent the past 20+ years covering the startup ecosystems in Boston and Silicon Valley for publications like the Boston Globe, Wired, Fast Company, Variety, BusinessWeek, and the New York Times. He now runs a research firm called Innolead, focused on how large organizations can innovate more effectively. In this session, he'll share data from a recent Innolead research report, developed in collaboration with MIT ILP and MIT Startup Exchange, on how corporates can engage with startups effectively — from both the corporate and startup point of view. How can they create win-win relationships, with a hybrid physical/digital strategy?
Read the full report on Innovation Leader:
https://www.innovationleader.com/research-reports/the-changing-landscape-of-corporate-startup-engagement/
Michael A M Davies teaches the engineering and business elements of the Integrated Design and Management (IDM) program at MIT
Michael A M Davies is the founder and chairman of Endeavour Partners, a boutique business strategy consulting firm that enables leaders in high-tech businesses and businesses being affected by technology worldwide to create value and drive growth through innovation. Endeavour Partners helps its clients anticipate, navigate, and innovate through insight and foresight in order to make better strategic decisions.Its clients include nearly all of the top-tier device vendors, network operators, service providers, and semiconductor businesses. Beyond high-tech, its clients include some of the world’s leading e-commerce, information services, oil and gas, packaging and logistics businesses, along with world-class sports teams.
He is an expert on the connections between technology, innovation, product development, consumer choice and behavior, the adoption and diffusion of new products, intellectual property, and the emergence and evolution of platforms and business ecosystems. Michael has spent his career helping top management make strategic decisions and drive innovation. Nowadays, he is focused on the rapid shift toward smartphones, cloud services, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and robotics, particularly the forces driving this shift and its impact and implications over the next few years.
Michael also runs the New Technology Ventures program at the London Business School. Additionally, he is an Advisor to the Department of Systems Engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
He also is a co-founder and the Chairman of silverthread, Inc., and angel-baked business commercializing research on software engineering from MIT and Harvard Business School, a member of the Board of the Kendall Square Association, the business group for this world leading innovation hub, the Chairman of the Mobile Cluster for Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council and an advisor to several other companies on digital business.
Katrina Khalil is a Communications Specialist at the MIT Corporate Relations.
Before joining Corporate Relations, Khalil has worked for the MIT Technology Licensing Office, where she spearheaded several communications-related efforts, an internship program, and managed the institute’s Trademark licensing.
Before becoming a member of the MIT community in 2013, Khalil was the Communications & PR Manager for the Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts in the Middle East. Former positions she had held include the British Council in Jerusalem, the Association of Women Committees for Social Work, the UNDP-Iraq / The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).
Khalil earned her bachelor’s in Journalism and Communications at Birzeit University in the West Bank and is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Journalism at the Harvard Extension School.
Outside of her professional life, Khalil is a painter and has participated in solo and group exhibitions in the Middle East.
Timothy M. Swager is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry the Department of Chemistry at MIT and the Faculty Director of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. In this latter role, Professor Swager works with the Center’s Executive Director to define the Center’s strategy for fostering innovation, assists with the commercialization of MIT technologies, and plays a key role in the grant selection process. Professor Swager also serves as the Center’s liaison to the MIT academic community, and senior leadership, sitting on faculty and academic committees. Following Professor Swager’s postdoctoral appointment at MIT, he joined the chemistry faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, returning to MIT in 1996 as a Professor of Chemistry, and served as the Head of Chemistry from 2005-2010. Professor Swager’s research interests are in design, synthesis, and study of organic-based electronic, sensory, high-strength and liquid crystalline materials. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers and more than 80 issued/pending patents. Professor Swager is the founder of four companies (DyNuPol, Iptyx, PolyJoule, and C2Sense) and has served on a number of corporate and government boards.He received a B.S. from Montana State University in 1983 and a Ph.D., from the California Institute of Technology in 1988.
Marcus Dahllöf leads MIT Startup Exchange, which facilitates connections between MIT-connected startups and corporate members of the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP). Dahllöf manages networking events, workshops, the STEX25 accelerator, opportunity postings, and helps define the strategic direction of MIT Startup Exchange. He is a two-time tech entrepreneur (one exit in cybersecurity), and has previously held roles in finance, software engineering, corporate strategy, and business development at emerging tech companies and Fortune 100 corporations in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. Marcus was a member of the Swedish national rowing team and he is a mentor at the MIT Venture Mentoring Service.
MIT has a rich history in entrepreneurship. According to a 2015 study, MIT alumni have founded companies that are generating revenues of $1.9 trillion, equivalent to the 10th largest economy in the world. However, what exactly does this mean for corporates that come to MIT regularly to solve challenging business problems? What is the opportunity at hand for these corporates to work with MIT startups?
Today, supported by a strong ecosystem, deep tech startups thrive at MIT with hundreds of startups being founded every year. Sitting at the intersection of startup innovation and industry, MIT Startup Exchange is a platform that offers access to over 1,400 active deep tech MIT-connected startups. Each year, Startup Exchange facilitates hundreds of targeted introductions between MIT-connected startups and our corporate ILP members. Why and how do these corporates engage with startups at MIT? What are the success stories? What are the lessons learned on how to effectively partner with deep tech?
John Carrier is a senior lecturer in the System Dynamics Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Managing Director of 532 Partners. His expertise is in shaping the dynamics of operating environments to improve productivity, quality, safety, and morale simultaneously. He has helped companies save hundreds of millions of dollars by helping them find and eradicate the hidden systems lurking inside every operation. His current focus is to help prepare companies to compete in the new environment of Industry 4.0.
He has educated over five hundred top-level leaders in the MIT Sloan Executive Education program in Oil & Gas, petrochemicals, mining, and healthcare. When not teaching, he spends most of his time in the operating environment, working directly with the front line to deliver measurable results in less than sixty days.
Dr. Carrier holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan, a Ph.D. in Control Systems from MIT, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Kendall Square is literally bursting with innovative thinkers, advanced laboratories, startup companies, and entrepreneurial activity across all industries and disciplines. This wealth of opportunities creates its own problem: how can companies best identify and build lasting connections into the Kendall Square nexus to support and extend their future technological vision?
In this discussion, we will review the best practices from our ILP members in successfully realizing transformation value from company visits to campus. We will focus the discussion around the following process:
Finally we will focus on the key principles for a successful corporate-MIT relationship, including:
Ralph Katz is a Senior Lecturer in Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Katz is also a professor of innovation and entrepreneurship management at Northeastern University’s College of Business.
For more than 35 years, he has been carrying out extensive management research, education, and consulting on how to build, lead, and sustain the innovation process, with a particular interest in the management and motivation of technical professionals and high-performing groups and project teams. During these years, Katz has conducted numerous workshops and seminars on innovation and R&D management in many organizations, and has worked with them to improve their management and leadership of innovation, including their practices, processes, and cultures. Among his more recent clients are major industrial corporations, including Procter & Gamble; Lockheed Martin; Goodrich; EMC; Nokia; Novartis; Medtronic; Tetra Pak; Master Foods, Inc.; Ciba Specialty Chemicals; and the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories. He teaches in two MIT Sloan executive programs and leads the Management of Technology and Innovation executive program at Cal Tech. For more than 10 years, he led the Management of Technology and Technical Professionals courses at IBM’s Corporate Technical Institute. Katz has taught in the executive programs of many other universities and was a visiting scholar at INSEAD in Paris during the 2003–04 academic year.
His most recent book is The Human Side of Managing Technological Innovation, second edition (Oxford University Press, 2004). In 1981, Katz was awarded the New Concept Award by the National Academy of Management for “Most Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Organizational Behavior.” He also was the 1986 recipient of R&D Management Journal’s Best Paper Award and the 1990 and 1991 recipient of the Academy of Management TIM Division’s Best Paper Award. In 2004, his paper in the IRI-sponsored journal, Research-Technology Management, was selected as the Holland Award Winner for that year’s most significant and original contribution to the field of research management. Katz serves on many journal editorial boards and was the research and development/innovation and entrepreneurship departmental editor for Management Science from 1991 to 2001.
Katz holds a BS in mathematics and physics from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA and a PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
To keep informed about relevant developments, technical professionals must collect and process information from a large variety of sources. In short, RD&E professionals have to both utilize the new relevant technical advances that are required for their products and services of tomorrow while also functioning efficiently at the same time for the organization’s current business requirements and pressures. Since communication processes play such an important role in fostering these kinds of creative work activities, we will examine and discuss in this presentation research findings that have shown not only how formal organizational structures and procedures influence information flows and innovative activities but also how the more informal interpersonal exchanges both inside and outside the organization can be enhanced and managed for more effective creative exchanges. The ideas and findings from past research studies need to be better understood especially in light of the pervasive role that electronic media has been playing within all of our work environments.
Tim Rowe is Founder and CEO of Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC). He also serves as Chair of MassRobotics and Venture Café Global Institute. Tim cofounded and served as the inaugural Chair of LabCentral and the Kendall Square Association, a community organization dedicated to strengthening innovation. He previously served as a lecturer at MIT, a manager with the Boston Consulting Group, an analyst at the Mitsubishi Research Institute, and a venture partner at New Atlantic Ventures. Tim speaks Spanish and Japanese fluently. Tim holds an MBA from MIT Sloan and a BA from Amherst College.
Tim Rowe has spent the past 20+ years leading one of the largest innovation facilities in the world, Cambridge Innovation Center. Over the years, CIC has been home to 1,000s of startups, investors, and corporate innovation teams, and is where Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple first launched their presences in Kendall Square, as well as such enterprises as Analog Garage and the venture arm of GlaxoSmithKline. In this session, Tim will share his observations on how global enterprises have successfully leveraged proximity to MIT, relationships with the Institute, and the Kendall Square ecosystem to their global benefit.