Nidhi Subbaraman writes for BetaBoston about Innovation Teams (“iTeams”), an MIT program that helps students commercialize products out of lab technologies. “When it comes to emerging tech — the brand-new stuff that’s published in journals… sometimes the path to market isn’t what the researchers envisioned when they built it. iTeams wants to give the hard stuff a chance,” explains Subbaraman.
BostInno reporter Dylan Martin writes about how MIT and BU have formed a new partnership to provide students with a source of legal advice on technology and business issues. “BU law students will provide free legal advice and representation to MIT and BU students who either want to start their own business or are already involved with a startup.”
MIT and Boston University are joining forces to provide law clinics for student entrepreneurs looking for legal advice, reports Katherine Nazemi for The Tech. “There’s opportunity for students to drop in and say ‘I don’t know if I need help or not, but this is what I’m doing, what do you think?’” explains Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart.
According to a new MIT study, airlines could handle flight delays more equitably by distributing them among themselves, reports Lloyd Mallison for Boston.com. The new system “would mean that two hypothetical planes could both have a 15-minute delay rather than one having no delay, and one having a 30-minute wait,” Mallison explains.
A new study by MIT researchers shows how airlines could juggle delays more equitably by distributing disruptions among themselves, reports Bart Jansen for USA Today. The researchers found that airlines could distribute delays “without adding significantly to the overall delays.”
Senior lecturer Hal Gregersen writes for Fortune that networking can be useful for not only career advancement, but also for sparking big business ideas. “It’s about talking to people with dissimilar backgrounds or perspectives to spark new thinking or solve a problem,” Gregersen explains.
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Chad Autry and Beth Davis-Sramek highlight an MIT study examining corporate sustainability efforts. Autry and Davis-Sramek write that, “In a global survey of 2,500 executives, 90% of the respondents indicate that businesses need to collaborate to address sustainability challenges.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Akst writes about a study by researchers at MIT and Northwestern that identified consumers who purchased new products likely to fail. If consumers with high “flop affinity” scores bought a product “that was a good sign that the item would be a bust.”
Kelsey D. Atherton writes for Popular Science about Explorer, a camera ball designed by MIT alumnus Francisco Aguilar that can be used by first responders to survey an area. “Rescue workers could drop Explorers into nooks and crannies that are otherwise inaccessible for larger tools."
Hal Gregersen, a senior lecturer at MIT and executive director of the MIT Leadership Center, writes for Fortune about the importance of asking questions. “Questioning is not a means to an end, but the creative intersection where a whole new solution – an innovative moment of truth – can catch fire,” Gregersen writes.
Financial Times reporter Rebecca Knight discusses MIT Sloan’s Master of Finance program and how to be a successful asset manager with Senior Lecturer Gita Rao. “It takes an incredible focus,” says Rao. “You have to be very decisive [and] you have to be an independent thinker.”
Senior lecturer Trond Undheim writes for WBUR’s Cognoscenti about how parenting has prepared him for being an entrepreneur. “As a parent, I often find myself laying down rules and setting expectations, only to end up questioning many of my previously held assumptions. I go through the same process as an entrepreneur,” Undheim explains.
In an article for The New York Times about the increasing demands placed on workers, Tony Schwartz writes about Prof. Zeynep Ton’s research, which indicated that allowing employees to slack can make them more effective. “Employees operating with some slack, Ms. Ton explained, add value that those pushed to the limit cannot,” Schwartz writes.
In a post for BetaBoston, Senior Lecturer Steven Spear urges the Boston 2024 committee to use videos and other representations to demonstrate what it would be like to host the Olympics: “Such simulations could help give people a sense of what something that occurs on the scale of the Games will look and feel like in practice.”
Team Raptor Maps received the top prize in MIT’s annual $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. Founded by three MIT students, Raptor Maps “proposes to use camera-carrying drones to survey farmland and pinpoint damage before pests and diseases can decimate crops.”