The winner of the 2015-2016 Y-Prize competition is Fermento for their idea to use Penn-developed microfluidics technology to improve the production process of beer.…Read More
2016 Y-Prize Winner is Fermento!
Events
Strategies for Success in the New Era of Connected Ecosystems
Our Fall Conference 2015 stressed the need to trade places with consumers in order to identify opportunities in a landscape where digital technologies have changed all the rules.…Read More
Introducing the 2015-2016 Y-Prize Finalists
The finalists in this year’s Y-Prize Competition have proposed ideas that would bring drug manufacturing right to the patient’s bedside, accelerate the production process of beer, and take the needle out of vaccine delivery.…Read More
“All Effective Innovations are Derived from a Profound Understanding of the User”
The “experience engineering” approach to innovation encourages designers to think about the series of emotions a user needs to feel in order to buy a product. Elisa Jagerson, CEO of Speck Design, argues that managers need to adopt a similar approach when trying to establish a culture of innovation.…Read More
To Create a Culture of Innovation, Learn to Celebrate Failure
To be more innovative, organizations need to adopt the practice of testing and experimenting with new ideas. Nate Fink of Microsoft Yammer explains why abolishing the fear of failure is essential to this process.…Read More
Leadership, Talent, and Culture: How to Win the Long Game in Innovation
Our most recent conference examined the intangible factors that can make or break a company’s innovation outcomes.…Read More
How to Cultivate Innovation for the Long Run
Here’s a generalization we feel pretty safe making: Every successful company achieves its success by figuring out how to deliver a particular product or a service better than anyone else previously has. Here’s another one: Unless that company can keep figuring out how to do that, its success is going to be short-lived. It’s only as strong as its ability to stay ahead of the next new thing.…Read More
Y-Prize Competitors Making News
Recent Y-Prize winners and finalists have used the competition as a launching pad to pursue even bigger and better opportunities.…Read More
For Best Customer Insights, Ask Them How They Feel. But Don’t Actually Ask Them.
How Technology is Transforming Market Research Take a typical adult to an ice cream parlor, says Richard Thorogood, and before making a choice they’ll weigh as many factors as there are flavors. “Well, I kind of want strawberry,” they’ll think, “but I always get strawberry, so maybe I should…Read More
Visuals Are the New Language of Consumers
Mobile and social technology have introduced a major cultural shift in the way we communicate. Why companies need to tailor their market research strategies – and their cycle times – accordingly.…Read More
Matching Entrepreneurs with Markets to Cure Health Care’s Woes
Executives from the new company Avia explain how their innovation cohort model helps struggling health systems while creating new marketplaces for entrepreneurs.…Read More
Connecting What’s Needed with What’s Possible
The Mack Institute Fall Conference 2014 examined how rapid advances in technology continuously change the way that organizations innovate.…Read More
When Disruptive Technology Threatens, Find a Partner
In new research sponsored by the Mack Institute, Rahul Kapoor and coauthor Thomas Klueter analyze how alliance-based strategies may help companies successfully manage the challenge of disruptive technology.…Read More
Why Established Firms Should Keep an Eye on Kickstarter
Crowdfunding has exploded in popularity since 2009, and its pace shows no signs of slowing. Funded researcher Ethan Mollick argues that this trend poses important implications for established firms as well as entrepreneurs.…Read More
Announcing the 2014-2015 Y-Prize Winners
The Mack Institute is thrilled to announce the winners in our third annual Y-Prize Competition.…Read More
In Search of Solutions for Clinical Needs
The Mack Institute’s Innovation Clinic workshops aim to empower a community of innovators at the intersection of medicine, engineering, and business.…Read More
Seven Things I Learned at the Mack Institute Fall Conference
At the Mack Institute Fall Conference, speakers shared valuable insight about how their respective businesses are trying to maintaining customer satisfaction while responding to the disruption created by software and technology.…Read More
Introducing the 2014-2015 Y-Prize Finalists
The Y-Prize is a competition in which student teams propose innovative commercial applications for technology invented by University of Pennsylvania researchers.We are thrilled to introduce the finalists in the 2014-2015 Competition.…Read More
Innovation Clinic Day 1: Innovation Tournaments
One key piece of the Mack Institute’s mission is to enable innovation across the Penn community. To that end, on November 7th the institute hosted the first of its Innovation Clinics, a workshop series aimed at the intersection of medicine, engineering, and business.…Read More
Y-Prize Competitors Throw Their Hats in the Ring
While much of the country was staying up late on the first Tuesday in November to watch election results roll in, for Mack Institute staffers the night after was the real nail-biter. This was the deadline for entries in the Y-Prize, and our anticipation was well rewarded.…Read More