The Innovation Center's mission is to teach and deliver innovation through corporate sponsored classes, labs, and programs.

 

 

Innovation ≠ Invention

Innovation is the application of abstract knowledge in a new way.

Innovation is applied and good innovation moves away from more traditional applications. The work we do is in pursuit of solving a specific problem for a partner. It cannot live apart from a need. How the need is identified, how we define the problem, how we view the current landscape, and the way we bring technology into the solution are all ingredients for innovation.

We practice integrative thinking: a way to reconcile competing or conflicting desires or realities.

 

Integrative thinking is inclusive. It allows for a diverse range of complex solutions, as well as a diverse combination of innovators.
Our innovation process isn’t discipline-specific. Innovation is collectively created and interdisciplinary collaboration is essential to the process because personal perspectives, histories, socio-cultural background, race, and gender all contribute to framing and solving a problem. The way people work through ambiguity and complexity contributes to resolving conflicting desires that problems almost always have.

 

Our process

Our Innovation process is divergent, convergent, non-linear, and multifaceted. In reality it is uncomfortably ambiguous. Our process is based on a framework that uses a compilation of tools from Business, the Social Sciences, Engineering, and Design.

Future Expansion

Expanding our reach.

We are expanding our reach within the university, providing interdisciplinary innovation opportunities across campus. We play a central role in being the place of integration and collaboration for the university. This requires more space for student teams, classes, sponsored labs, and cross-college events. Our working methods require more flexibility, room for growth, security for partners, openness for the community, and visibility to the university.

Creating an innovation talent force for the City of Chicago.

We are the front door to UIC’s corporate collaboration initiatives. When civic leaders and corporate partners visit the Innovation Center, they see and understand the interdisciplinary collaboration methods we possess to provide new skills, help solve complex problems, and create and retain talent in our city.

Our new space.

To work with us on the design of our expansion, we partnered with Gensler, a company that understands how we work, and how architecture can support and reflect some of our core values: integrity in the work; honesty in materials; transparency in our methods; and celebration of our solutions.

Place and space matter.

The Innovation Center is a story-telling space. Experiential learning methods and outcomes are demonstrated and displayed as a way to understand, communicate, and develop ideas. The new space will reflect our working methods and add additional capacity for new projects, and educational offerings, as well as creating presentation and exhibition spaces, to help knit the campus together.

A space that empowers.

UIC is a significant provider of talent showcasing the work and accomplishments our students, faculty, and corporate partners do together will be magnified through a facility that supports our goals, methods, and outcomes.

Reimagining the future.

Change happens, all of the time. We approach our work with a mindset that constant evolution is the only way to advance in the world we inhabit. Improving our ability to enhance collaboration, bringing different disciplines and viewpoints together, and expanding exposure to ideas will increase UIC’s ability to change the future.

Partner History

Our partners range a variety of industries and have unique needs. Through our proven process we are able to approach, understand, and innovate around complex problems for our partners.

Classes and Labs

The Innovation Center works to bridge higher education with industry partners and commercialization. We run 4 sponsored classes with 120+ students, including 20 disciplines and 5 sponsored labs with 44 students, 8 alumni, and 13 faculty.

Interdisciplinary (X) Development

  • About IXD

    Interdisciplinary (X) Development is an interdisciplinary innovation curriculum allowing students to practice their skills in an educational hybrid: the exploratory setting of a classroom with the real-world experience of working with a corporate partner. Our classes apply innovation to a variety of problem areas—products, services, systems, and experiences. X represents any one of these problem areas, depending on the identified need.

  • Partner Benefits

    Partners have the opportunity to work with 25+ student from multiple disciplines, across two semesters, designed to align with their problem domain. By sponsoring a class, our partners are given access to student talent, innovative thinking from fresh perspectives, and a diverse campus.

  • Student Learning Outcomes

    Students will work on a cross-disciplinary collaborative team with faculty and students to develop concepts and pitch them to corporate partners. Teams will conduct research, define problems, pursue impactful solutions, practice storytelling, and in the process gain real-world professional experience. Projects focus on complex issues within industries such as: Healthcare, higher education, technology, mobility, and medical.

Access to Talent, Innovation, and Ideas

IXD provides our partners access to student talent, access to innovative thinking, and access to diversity through our innovative curriculum. There are 120+ students in classes at the Innovation Center, including 20 disciplines.

Access to Talent

The student discipline mix is designed to align with a partner’s problem domain. Partners have the opportunity to work closely with 25 to 50 students from multiple disciplines, across two semesters. This direct connection between partner and senior-level student provides an excellent platform for targeted recruiting, and evidence of qualification. We have had students hired directly from our classes and labs into companies like Caterpillar, Northern Trust, Dell Technologies, Amazon, BD Medical, Anthem, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Access to Innovative Thinking

Our teams bring new, unencumbered thinking to longstanding problems. We are outsiders, with a set of methods and tools that allow problem framing and solution development that comes from a truly a fresh perspective. Aside from specific solution innovation, our partners have access to our curriculum, teaching methods, and tools, which have helped accelerate innovation initiatives within their organizations.

Access to Diversity

UIC is one of the most diverse universities in the United States. Our corporate partners have access to a body of students that represents what the US is rapidly becoming—a majority minority population. In our classes, we encourage students to engage in integrative thinking, which leverages discipline knowledge along with personal experiences, perspectives, and beliefs. These are all shaped by socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions. Every problem we solve is viewed by teams from multiple vantage points. Having access to this student population has value for our partners. 

Corporate Labs

  • About

    Our corporate labs drive exploratory development with small teams of dedicated student employees and advising faculty. Projects run on a semester to multiple year basis. The timeline of a project depends on the desired outcome, complexity, and project evolution. Each lab has a unique focus and uses integrative thinking tools and methods to identify needs, generate new ideas, and develop prototypes.

     

  • Partner Benefits

    Labs are a more dedicated environment for projects to fully develop. Each lab team concentrates on a focused problem, bringing fresh perspectives and the ability to do high-level research. As members of a research university, lab teams are able to fully utilize their access to resources and subject matter experts, and work alongside dedicated faculty.

  • Student Learning Outcomes

    Students will gain paid professional experience through working with corporate partners, advising faculty, and interdisciplinary team members. Through the scope of a project, students will learn and implement user research techniques, prototyping and testing methods, and presentation skills.

OSF HealthCare Lab

The Order of St. Francis HealthCare (OSF) lab and Little Company of Mary (LCM) are comprised of over 150 primary care and specialist offices and series in Illinois and Michigan. OSF/LCM focus on both rural and urban challenges in providing care to the underserved. OSF/LCM is driven by a mission to rethink how care may be provided to those most in need and applies transformative approaches to new models of care and proactive intervention strategies. The lab hires both undergraduate and graduate students from multiple disciplines: public health, business, design, computer science, and medicine.

CAT Lab

The Caterpillar (CAT) lab supports a wide variety of innovation initiatives for Caterpillar. Broadly, CAT is interested in how to apply machine-data into a needed and valued product for their customers. Student teams have developed service-strategy solutions for quarry and aggregate sites; designed, built, and tested safety wearable products; designed methods to maximize machine usage on large highway construction sites; and developed machine learning techniques to predict machine activity with accelerometer data. The CAT lab is a fully multidisciplinary lab, with undergraduate and graduate students from computer science, design, management information systems, business, and mechanical engineering.

OSF HealthCare Lab

The Order of St. Francis HealthCare (OSF) lab and Little Company of Mary (LCM) are comprised of over 150 primary care and specialist offices and series in Illinois and Michigan. OSF/LCM focus on both rural and urban challenges in providing care to the underserved. OSF/LCM is driven by a mission to rethink how care may be provided to those most in need and applies transformative approaches to new models of care and proactive intervention strategies. The lab hires both undergraduate and graduate students from multiple disciplines: public health, business, design, computer science, and medicine.

CAT Lab

The Caterpillar (CAT) lab supports a wide variety of innovation initiatives for Caterpillar. Broadly, CAT is interested in how to apply machine-data into a needed and valued product for their customers. Student teams have developed service-strategy solutions for quarry and aggregate sites; designed, built, and tested safety wearable products; designed methods to maximize machine usage on large highway construction sites; and developed machine learning techniques to predict machine activity with accelerometer data. The CAT lab is a fully multidisciplinary lab, with undergraduate and graduate students from computer science, design, management information systems, business, and mechanical engineering.

Medical Labs

  • About

    Multidisciplinary teams of dedicated student employees and advising faculty work on medical challenges brought to the lab from the college of medicine. Teams work on medical devices and services assessing the needs and viability of proposals, conducting observational research, concept development, and prototyping, in an effort to bring products to potential commercial partners. See an example from ORBIT Lab, published in the Journal of Medical Engineering and Technology.

  • Partner Benefits

    Medical labs are a resource for a variety of clinicians who are dissatisfied with current methods, tools, processes, or communication approaches. Our distinct medical labs concentrate on surgical tools and methods, urological devices, ophthalmology tools, and health applications to improve communication between providers and patients.

  • Student Learning Outcomes

    Students from multiple disciplines learn to work in teams to solve problems in very unfamiliar territory. Often, radically new approaches are developed by teams that approach problems from a distinctly non-medical point of view. Insights from the uninitiated allow for new ways to think through problems, or bring adjacent arenas into the solution development.

MAD Lab

The Medical Accelerator for Devices (MAD) lab selects proposals from UIC medical practitioners that have high potential to solve specific medical problems. The multidisciplinary team validates the need through research and takes the solution through the design development cycle. Innovation has covered a broad spectrum of medical problems ranging from neurology to gynecology to stroke rehabilitation. Our goal is to develop proof of concept prototypes with an in-depth market analysis for further development with industry partners.

Learn More About MAD Lab

UR* Lab

The Department of Urology at UIC is a world leader in medical device innovation. Combining faculty from the Colleges of Medicine, Engineering, Design, and Business in UIC’s unique Innovation Center, the UIC Department of Urology creates new real-world solutions to life challenging medical problems. Through licensing of intellectual property generated by the lab, UR* Lab is designed to generate self-supporting revenue in five years. Prototypes created by students and faculty in the Innovation Center and tested in real-world settings demonstrate to investors the significant value of this intellectual property.

ORBIT Lab

Ophthalmic Research in Bioengineering, Innovation, and Technology (ORBIT) lab works intimately with UIC physicians and researchers within the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences to uncover hidden needs and develop appropriate solutions through device design. Influenced by the other successful medical device design labs at the Innovation Center, ORBIT lab has developed its own customized process and timeline, focusing on the generation of functional prototypes and intellectual property.

Learn More About ORBIT Lab

HAL Lab

The Healthcare Application Lab (HAL) is a new project-focused lab, concentrating on the research, design, and development of healthcare applications for digital devices. In partnership with the College of Medicine, HAL provides opportunities for improving health outcomes through digital device programs used by clinicians for both procedures and managing care outcomes. For patients, HAL creates digital tools to understand, engage with, and adhere to care regimes.

Consulting

  • About

    Project Lab is staffed by full-time Human-Centered Designers (and UIC alumni) with vast experience working in interdisciplinary teams. Project Lab works with faculty on innovation curriculum development, internal development needs within the Innovation Center, and operates as a consultancy on projects for corporate and university partners.

  • Partner Benefits

    Project Lab has the capacity to focus on individual projects with a deep exploration into a specific topic, allowing partners to explore a project without the full commitment of a lab or a class. Project Lab members are experienced in approaching problems from a human-centered perspective and delivering innovative solutions for corporate partners.

Corporate and University Projects

Project Lab works with corporate and university partners. Past projects have looked at better understanding a health system’s catchment area and the challenges faced by the population it serves; establishing best practices and training within an organization to promote scalability; and identifying solutions to digital inequity within a specified community.

Curriculum Development

Project Lab works with faculty on curriculum development at the Innovation Center. The curriculum development is focused on innovative classes and workshops for students tightly linking steps and learning through the solution development process through activity based learning, allowing students to learn through practice.

Corporate and University Projects

Project Lab works with corporate and university partners. Past projects have looked at better understanding a health system’s catchment area and the challenges faced by the population it serves; establishing best practices and training within an organization to promote scalability; and identifying solutions to digital inequity within a specified community.

Curriculum Development

Project Lab works with faculty on curriculum development at the Innovation Center. The curriculum development is focused on innovative classes and workshops for students tightly linking steps and learning through the solution development process through activity based learning, allowing students to learn through practice.

Innovation Workshops and Training Modules

  • About

    Our workshops and training modules guide and educate practitioners through the innovation development cycle. We use a human-centered approach that builds empathy for the user, delivers insights, and helps us solve for unmet needs.

  • Participant Benefits

    Our offerings introduce participants to different parts of our process and how to approach big problems from a human-centered perspective. Participants will learn different skills and new tools depending on the workshop or training module chosen.

Innovation Workshops and Training Modules

Click through to see the innovation workshops and training modules at the Innovation Center.

Innovation Workshops

Student Innovation workshops guide students through different parts of the innovation development cycle. Participants learn about different parts of the process, how to approach them from a human-centered perspective, and put into practice what they learn. Workshops concentrate on a specific topic, such as storytelling, interviewing, prototyping, or pitch building, or build in a series of workshops to go more in depth on specific topics.

Innovation Education Modules

Education modules are discipline specific training that introduces students to the innovation development cycle. Students learn about new tools and techniques to apply to their discipline specific work and prepare them for an interdisciplinary work environment.

Executive Training

Executive training workshops guide practitioners through the innovation development cycle. They are offered in a one to three day workshop that introduces participants to the design thinking process, a six-week course that allows participants to practice new methods by applying them to needs within their organization, and an immersive six month design thinking partnership, custom designed to fulfill the objectives of the partner.