We offer three types of services
We work to impart innovation tools, that draw from our decades of teaching, research and entrepreneurship experiences at MIT, in an accessible, hands-on format that is free of jargon.
Our engagements can be as short as a one-day workshop or as long as a multi-year program, with in-person or remote engagement.
Do you want to build or strengthen a culture of innovation in your organization?
LEARN: Design Thinking Workshop
We are pained to see many large organizations rely far too much on external consultants, rather than equipping their own workforce with tools to innovate. We see missed opportunities, where technologists failed to communicate the promise of an innovation and where managers failed to communicate the promise of a market.
This intensive workshop is targeted to equip a company's technology and business leaders, together, with a toolbox of skills to effectively and efficiently ideate and develop innovative, customer-centered products and services.
Participants conduct exercises in teams, with ideas from their own organization, develop and analyze them using our toolkit, and explore the potential for these to launch into new projects and products.
Our goal is to empower participants to become more creative and responsive to customer needs and market shifts and to serve as champions of design thinking inside your organization. A culture that encourages innovation is essential to recruiting and retaining the best talent.
We focus on making the fundamentals accessible
Key Topics
Avoid the trap of incremental innovation
Profile your customers
Identify opportunities
Develop potential solutions
Build a value proposition
Segment your market
Identify a beachhead
Sell your ideas within your organization
We take a practical, active learning approach: Participants work on their own ideas and are on their feet, learning by doing and supporting each other.
We promise to teach, not tell!
Are you responsible for supporting and growing technology-based startups?
SHARPEN: Startup Stress Test
We work with early stage companies to pressure test and hone their technical and commercial viability. We have felt the pain of pitching unprepared in front of investors.
Our program takes a rigorous risk-based approach that guides founders to question their assumptions, identify weaknesses, develop mitigation strategies and improve their business plans and presentation.
For each Stress Test, we engage experts with industry-specific knowledge to provided targeted feedback. Domains include healthcare, energy, aerospace, environment, performance materials, IoT and edge computing and others.
Our goal is to prepare founders for the due diligence that will occur when raising funding by offering them a supportive yet rigorous experience to sharpen their skills and strategies.
This is targeted at public and private groups that focus on building and sustaining entrepreneurial ecosystems.
LET US CRAFT A CUSTOM PROGRAM FOR YOU!
DEEPEN: Custom Program
We can work with your organization to develop a long-term, sustainable strategy that fosters continual growth and development of an internal innovation ecosystem. A typical engagement involves designing the intervention, defining a way to measure the outcome, and devising a process for making the necessary adjustments to achieve the goal.
The undertaking often involves devising the right incentive structure and creating new linkages in the organization. The targeted outcome is a culture that removes barriers and empowers employees to identify opportunities, collaborate to turn them into new products and service with speed and pragmatism.
We can also offer services such independent assessment of programs undertaken by organizations. The deliverable may be a report or other strategic document. We are able to analyze individual products or services, ecosystems, or policy interventions.
Remote or in Person?
Remote Services
We are partnered with Giro Studio to provide the option of delivering our services via professionally managed Zoom. The Studio will manage remote participants connections, all media and breakout groups. We can deliver content individually, to small groups or in large lecture format. We will build a program to fit your organization's needs.
We work across cultures
We have worked with startups and multinationals worldwide