Dispatch 1 —NYC Spring 2020
Dear Friends and Stakeholders of YU Innovation Lab,
One year ago this month we cut the opening ribbon on the YU Innovation Lab, a bold experiment in a model we call academy-as-a-platform. It’s been an amazing year of 180+ students, 20+ startups and an expanding series of programs, projects and events.
Here’s our Dispatch №1 as both thank-you and update to our partners, founders, mentors, professors, students and colleagues who made it all possible.
What happened...
Delivered. As part of our integration with Sy Syms School of Business and Katz School of Science and Health, our student project teams developed and delivered a range of high-value deliverables with and for our participating startups:
- market and competitive analysis and studies
- marketing research program design, implementation, reports and recommendations
- audience insights development
- product and service design validation / optimization
- go-to-market strategic plans
- social marketing strategies
Pitch Night. We held our first Pitch Night with Maccabee Ventures via Zoom May 4th, and its success set a high bar for many more to come. Along with a deeply engaged audience of students, Maccabee Ventures managing principal Moshe Bellows quizzed three startup founders on their potential viability for investment. The three Innovation Lab startups pitching were Libra Home, QPrivacy and Imoovo and judging by the energy and intensity of the session, move over Shark Tank!…
This Stuff Works. From across the first year of startup projects integrated into our curricula, we sampled a handful of quotes from our partner startup founders and CEOs -
“I received the students’ detailed end-of-semester report. It was so great we’ll be including some of the student findings in our business plan.”
“Thank you for all of the input and insights … we would like to explore the possibility of students helping in the form of an internship.”
“We really loved your out-of-the-box thinking.”
“You are amazing, I really liked your work. You truly understand the core business and the challenges of our customers. An amazing job!…”
Thought Leadership. On May 15th we officially launched our YU Innovation Lab website. Featured on our site is our Thought Leadership publishing platform, which we launched this Spring as a Medium blog here. We invite you to connect with us on Medium and we’ll spread your word as you help spread ours.
What’s next…
Deep Listening webinar. On May 27th at 9:30am NYC & 4:30pm Israel time we are presenting an interactive webinar produced and hosted by our partner, Gav Yam Negev. The session’s provocative headline is “Got insights?” — and we’re anticipating a lively interrogation of deep listening as emergent marketing research methodology. Register for this Zoom now to witness how fresh insight can be transformed into business value in the world of cyber tech, B2B marketing and startup cultures of all kinds.
Summer Innovation Lab. In the spirit of value acceleration, the Innovation Lab will be welcoming six startups this summer. We have developed project briefs and are in the process of matching student teams with best-fit startups.
Startups Fall 2020. We are accepting and reviewing applications from startup companies to participate in the Innovation Lab’s Fall 2020 session. The deadline is June 12th and the short application form is here .
We’re so deeply grateful to all the founders, partners and consultants who have made year one of this journey as memorable as it was meaningful … and we look forward to similar boundless student learning and startup acceleration from the Innovation Lab in year two and beyond.
We invite you to connect with the authors, Dr. Maria Blekher the Innovation Lab’s founder and director, and lead consulting adjunct Thom Kennon.
Visit the Innovation Lab here https://www.yu.edu/innovation-lab.
