Congratulations to the four student teams chosen as finalists for this year’s Y-Prize competition: Serpent, EmBrace, Agentis and Stentix! The Y-Prize competition challenges students to build their entrepreneurial skills by creating business plans for technologies invented at Penn Engineering. The team with the best commercial application wins $10,000 to help make…Read More
Last year, the Mack Institute kicked off our Predoctoral Fellowship Program, in which talented recent graduates come to Wharton to work closely with faculty for a period of two years. Our “predocs” provide much-needed research assistance to their faculty mentors while learning new skills to prepare them for PhD programs. …Read More
In more and more workplaces, important decisions aren’t made by managers but by algorithms which have increasing levels of access to and control over workers. While algorithmic management can boost efficiency and flexibility (as well as enabling a new class of quasi-self-employed workers on platforms like Uber and Instacart), critics…Read More
Friday, November 8, 2024 The Wharton School, Philadelphia The Mack Institute is pleased to announce our Fall 2024 conference, AI-Driven Innovation Ecosystems. Bringing together leading Wharton researchers with expert business practitioners, this one-day conference will explore how firms can overcome the risks and high costs of AI development and implementation…Read More
The Y-Prize Competition kicked off this week with a well-attended event held in Steinberg-Dietrich Hall. Now in its thirteenth year, the Y-Prize challenges students to hone their entrepreneurial skills by creating business plans using cutting-edge technology developed at Penn Engineering. The team that comes up with the most promising commercial…Read More
Collaboration between industry and academia drives innovation forward, but creating a successful partnership—and measuring its impact—is more challenging than it might appear. We spoke to Wharton’s David Hsu about his new paper, forthcoming in Management Science, on what makes industry-university collaboration successful, the importance of viewing innovation as a long-term…Read More
During the Spring 2024 semester, Rekha Chowdhury WG’24, Amy Fang C’24 SEAS ‘26, and Aditya Jayant Ganapathiraju SEAS’24, worked with biopharmaceutical company CSL Behring on a special research project relating to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI). The student group developed an external DEI initiative focused on broadening the company’s network…Read More
Mack Institute Senior Fellow Jon DeGaynor has been appointed president and CEO of Methode Electronics, a leading global supplier of custom solutions for user interface, LED lighting system and power distribution applications. DeGaynor has a 35 year career working at a high level in the automotive and manufacturing industries. He…Read More
This June, Mack Institute leadership traveled to Brazil for Wharton’s 56th Global Forum, which was held in São Paulo for the first time. Hosted annually in a different world city, the two-day business conference brings together Wharton alumni, faculty, and global business leaders for lectures, panel discussions, and networking. This…Read More
Mack Institute Research Assistant Lennart Meincke and Wharton Associate Professor of Management Andrew Carton have released a new working paper in our series of working papers on ChatGPT spearheaded by Mack Faculty Director Christian Terwiesch. The new paper, entitled “Beyond Multiple Choice: The Role of Large Language Models in Educational…Read More
Collaborative Innovation: Shaping the Future with Corporate Venturing and Startups Spring 2024 Conference Report In this era of rapidly evolving, highly disruptive technologies, corporate venturing practices are evolving, too. High-profile partnerships like Microsoft’s $13 billion investment in OpenAI or BMW’s move into the electrification space with ChargePoint underscore the current…Read More 
Mack Institute Executive Director Valery Yakubovich and Wharton professors Peter Cappelli and Prasanna Tambe have authored a new article in the Wall Street Journal that discusses current research and predictions on how AI adoption will affect the workforce. Dr. Yakubovich and his co-authors push back on the popular conception of…Read More
Panelists Steven Nichtberger, Jen Gilburg, John Swartley, and Tempest Carter On April 24, the Mack Institute, together with Philadelphia’s Department of Commerce, presented Tech Talks, a panel discussion with government officials and entrepreneurs on how Penn and Wharton can help solidify the city’s future as a leader in innovation and…Read More
Join Us For Tech Talks: Bridging Academia and Innovation in Philly's Tech Hub Wednesday, April 24 | 6:00 p.m. 8th Floor, Jon M. Huntsman Hall 3730 Walnut St, Philadelphia, PA 19104 Join us at the University of Pennsylvania for an event co-organized by the Mack Institute for Innovation Management and the City of Philadelphia Department of…Read More 
During the Fall 2023 semester, Catrina Lim WG’24, Harini Pundi Satyanarayanan WG’24, and Sherry Xue SEAS’25 participated in the Mack Institute’s Collaborative Innovation Program (MGMT 892), a project-based course that brings Wharton students into real companies to help them solve problems and drive innovation strategies. The students were part…Read More
The Mack Institute and Penn Dental’s Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD) kicked off a collaborative research project exploring potential uses of nanorobot technology for oral health care. The interdisciplinary partnership brings together three students from different Penn and Wharton programs to study the commercialization of a new technology…Read More
Mack Institute Research Assistant Lennart Meincke, Wharton Professor Ethan Mollick and Mack Institute Co-Director and Wharton Professor Christian Terwiesch have published the next in Terwiesch’s series of working papers on ChatGPT. The new paper evaluates how LLMs can be used for idea generation and explores methods to increase the novelty,…Read More
Friday, March 22, 2024 The Wharton School, Philadelphia The Mack Institute is pleased to announce our Spring 2024 conference, Collaborative Innovation: Shaping the Future with Corporate Venturing and Startups. In this era of transformative and disruptive new technologies, the relationship between established firms and startups is becoming more collaborative. These…Read More
Congratulations to LilyLoop, winners of this year’s $10,000 Y-Prize! The team of first-year undergrads proposed a commercial application for Penn’s biodegradeable moisture sensors: a line of “smart” period products that alerts users when to change tampons and captures menstrual flow data for diagnostic purposes. One in five American women suffers…Read More
Our recent conference, Driving Innovation with Generative AI, brought together representatives from academia, industry, startups, and the venture capital world to explore how this new technology is changing the business world. Read the full report on the conference here, then check out these deep dives into our expert panels. Tracking…Read More 
