William Aulet, managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, speaks with Cheryl Conner of Forbes about what entrepreneurs can gain from taking online courses. “Entrepreneurship is not a gift,” Aulet explains. “It’s a skill. People should think of becoming an entrepreneur in the same way they think of becoming a teacher or lawyer.”
In an article for Science based off his AAAS Presidential Address, Phillip Sharp, Institute Professor and former president of the AAAS, discusses the need to accelerate the transition from discovery to innovation to address the challenges facing society. “To meet oncoming global challenges, we will need to better link discovery, innovation, and entrepreneurship,” Sharp explains.
Visiting Lecturer Irving Wladawsky-Berger gives his reaction to the preliminary report examining innovation at MIT in a piece for The Wall Street Journal. “Beyond MIT, the report should be of value to anyone interested in the growing importance of innovation to institutions, economies and societies around the world.”
Vijee Venkatraman writes for BetaBoston about Kumbhathon, a tech buildathon co-founded by Professor Ramesh Raskar to address problems specific to the Kumbh Mela religious gathering in India. “This is a bottom-up approach to innovation,” says Raskar.
In an article for Newsweek about nuclear energy, Josh Freed highlights Transatomic, a company founded by two MIT PhD candidates to commercialize their concept for a molten salt reactor that can safely burn nuclear waste.
Writing for Forbes, Andy Boynton and William Bole examine MIT Visiting Scholar Michael Schrage’s new book ‘The Innovator’s Hypothesis: How Cheap Experiments Are Worth More than Good Ideas.” “[Schrage] argues that even good ideas are ‘the enemy’ of innovation because they distract people from what’s most important—making sure you could do something useful with the ideas."
Stacy Shepard writes for Boston Magazine about FitBark, a product created by MIT alumnus Davide Rossi that monitors a dog’s activity and health statistics. “Our pets are full members of the family, and we needed a way to monitor how they are doing,” says Rossi.
Professor Clapperton Mavhunga speaks with Jasmine McNealy of New Books in Technology about his childhood, the history of innovation in Africa, and his new book, “Transient Workspaces: Technologies or Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe.”
Curt Nickisch of WBUR reports that MIT, Harvard, MGH and The Boston Globe are joining forces for HUBweek, a weeklong festival focused on innovation to be held in the fall of 2015. “MIT plans to host a huge gathering called SOLVE to tackle with some of the world’s most perplexing problems,” reports Nickisch.
Matt Murphy writes for WBUR about Solve, an event MIT will host next fall as part of the HUBweek innovation festival. The event will focus on “research and problem-solving exercises” aimed at four areas: education, health care, manufacturing, and environmental sustainability and energy.
Yiqing Shao of Boston Magazine reports on HUBweek, a new innovation festival that will be co-hosted by MIT, The Boston Globe, Harvard and MGH. “By uniting so many of the region’s leading institutions, HUBweek itself embodies the open, collaborative spirit that has helped make Greater Boston and Cambridge a hotbed of innovation and new ideas,” said MIT President L. Rafael Reif.
Nidhi Subbaraman of BetaBoston writes about the affordable wheelchair made out of bike parts developed by Prof. Amos Winter. Winter and his team have now created a second wheelchair that allows riders to “navigate ski slopes and bike trails.”
Boston Globe reporter Michael Levenson writes about HUBweek, an “innovation-themed festival” that aims to showcase Boston. As part of HUBweek, MIT will host “‘Solve’ to brainstorm solutions to problems in education, energy, the environment, manufacturing, and infrastructure.”
“If the festival helps experts in Greater Boston make new connections across disciplines and across institutions — and find common interests and opportunities for collaboration with people around the world — the region as a whole can only benefit,” writes The Boston Globe Editorial Board of HUBweek, which will be co-hosted by MIT.
Boston Herald reporter Jordan Graham writes about a new report examining innovation at MIT. Graham writes that the study’s authors recommended “a co-working space for recent MIT graduates, the construction of two “Innovation Hubs” on campus, and the creation of the Laboratory for Innovation Science and Policy, a department that would study the innovation process and how to foster it.”