How universities are looking past incubators to future functionality.
Are college and university investments in innovation worth the time and money? Only if your incubators lead to scalable, sustainable success, says new research.
A recent report, conducted in 2014 by the American Council on Education (ACE) and Huron Education aimed to gauge some of the current thinking and practices of select institutions on taking innovation from a commonly passed around buzzword to actionable practice.
A survey of a sample of ACE member institutions revealed that approximately 10 percent had any organized institutional-level unit or effort dedicated to academic innovation development.
Of those 10 percent, ACE chose five institutions that had detailed case studies and data on their innovation incubators—each highlighting the goals, challenges, and outcomes of their own unique approaches to scaling innovation campus-wide.
(Next page: 5 ways to make innovation efforts worth the resources)