A key goal of the Y-Prize Competition is to foster collaboration between various schools at Penn. Isabelle Park, an MBA candidate at the Wharton School, and Gavin Kenneally, a Ph.D. Candidate in Mechanical Engineering, describe the joys and challenges of working on a cross-disciplinary team. What role did you play in shaping…Read More
The Y-Prize Competition is all about sparking innovation at Penn. Tom Fitzsimons, CEO of Kerathin LLC, discusses why the competition is unique and what made this year’s prizewinning idea stand out. What makes the Y-Prize competition interesting to you? The goal of the Y-Prize competition is to get a different perspective…Read More
The Mack Institute co-hosted its annual Wharton Technology and Innovation Conference on April 12 and 13, 2014. This guest post by Glenn Hoetker (W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University) summarizes one of the papers for which he was a discussant. In the global competition for innovative success, location matters.…Read More
The Mack Institute is thrilled to announce Emily Plumb, a Mechanical Engineering Masters student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), as the winner of the 2013-2014 Y-Prize Competition. Emily is a passionate advocate of STEM education for young children, and her enthusiasm showed clearly throughout her presentation at…Read More
The first round of the 2013-2014 Y-Prize saw a wide range of inventive submissions from student teams across the university. Now, four finalist teams are hard at work (with assistance from their GRASP Lab tech consultants and Wharton business consultants) to perfect their ideas for commercializing Penn robotics technology. As a testament to the…Read More
Our longtime corporate partners at Teradata are frequent and enthusiastic participants at our yearly conferences. One attendee, Monica Mullen, recently shared her key takeaways from our recent Fall Conference. Her post originally appeared in the company’s Industry Experts blog. I had the pleasure of talking with Mr. J. David Power…Read More
Mack Institute events don’t typically include references to farming techniques, but the Fall Conference 2013 was a rare exception. In this video summary of his presentation, Takeshi Yamaguchi describes how Nissan’s approach to advanced technical development resembles the cultivation of an orchard. Instead of a linear approach, Nissan achieves successful…Read More
What happens when two industries with fundamentally different clockspeeds converge within a single product? In a recent Knowledge@Wharton article, Program on Vehicle and Mobility Innovation Director John Paul MacDuffie discusses the challenges of integrating IT-based technology, such as computer-based collision avoidance systems, into automobiles. MacDuffie highlights the tight integration of…Read More
The Mack Institute is excited to host the Y-Prize Spring Kick-off on Monday, January 27 at 6:00 P.M. in Huntsman Hall 340. Attendees will hear from keynote speakers Elizabeth Beattie and Nick McGill, two members of the team that created the Titan Arm—an upper-body exoskeleton that increases the wearer’s ability…Read More
How J.D. Power III Transformed the Auto Industry Through the collection of consumer feedback on cars, J.D. “Dave” Power III revolutionized the automobile industry in 1968. In this Knowledge@Wharton interview conducted by PVMI director John Paul MacDuffie, Power discusses the founding and early years of his firm, J.D. Power and…Read More
In addition to hosting the 2013 Fall Conference with the Program on Vehicle and Mobility Innovation (PVMI), the Mack Institute also held a PVMI Researchers Meeting on November 21, 2013. Both events focused on the theme of disruptive technologies and value migration. In this guest blog post, PVMI veteran Dan Whitney of…Read More
The Mack Institute hosted its annual Fall Conference on November 22, 2013 with the Program on Vehicle and Mobility Innovation (PVMI) on the topic of “When Disruptive Technologies Meet Integrated Systems: Who Captures the Value?” This guest post by three PVMI researchers summarizes key takeaways from the conference, including the…Read More
Knowing when to hold and when to fold isn’t just for poker players. When applied to new technology, that insight into knowing when to embrace the next new thing and when to let it pass has been known to make or break careers and entire companies. Think Kodak, an iconic…Read More
Penn Engineering undergrad Dick Zhang is one of three members of IDENTIFIED, the 2012 winning team of the Y-Prize competition. In this guest blog post, he shares insight about his Y-Prize competition experience. Some innovations seem to materialize out of nowhere. But in the pursuit of innovation, sometimes all you have to…Read More
This year’s Emerging Scholars Workshop brought together 21 early-career researchers for a week of intensive study and debate on evolutionary theories and their applications to strategic management. We spoke with 2013 participant Kevin Miceli about his experience of the program. Why did you apply for ESW and what did you…Read More
This is a guest post by Professor Dan Levinthal, organizer of Emerging Scholars Workshop 2013. The Mack Institute, with support from the Kauffman Foundation, has just held the second Emerging Scholars Workshop. This is an exciting new program that brings together 20 outstanding doctoral students from leading programs (INSEAD, Harvard,…Read More
Most business leaders are by now vaguely aware that the growing use of mobile phones is changing the competitive landscape for all companies, no matter the industry. The extent of those changes is greater than most appreciate. These changes include entirely new methods of designing products and completely revamped methods…Read More
There is a perfect storm for disruption being created by the convergence of mobile, social, and cloud technologies and applications. This was a major theme of the Mack Institute’s Spring Conference on May 30, entitled How Mobile and Social are Transforming Innovation Models: Flipping the Paradigm? This was the Mack…Read More
The Y-Prize Competition Grand Finale, which took place Monday, February 4, saw the judging of the final four teams, whose challenge it was to suggest practical applications of robotic technology developed in the GRASP Lab at Penn.…Read More
What would it look like if Wharton and engineering students came together to innovate new applications for Penn Technology? It would look a lot like the Y-Prize Competition, co-sponsored by the Mack Center. The Y-Prize is a chance for a team or individual with the strongest idea to win $5000…Read More
