In the world, for the world: Campus innovation pipelines at MIT and beyond

With MIT as a case example, we identify and connect four aspects of innovation in higher education: a newly expansive view of academia’s innovation outputs, including non-commercial products; field-tested activities that power these outputs by helping innovators to generate, explore, develop solutions through the campus innovation pipeline; infrastructures that enable, including by fostering transfer and hand-offs; and supportive norms that help innovation to flourish. Our goal is to spark a practical, global conversation about ways to address the innovation imperative facing universities everywhere. The present framework is a starting point for building a shared understanding of these elements and their interactions to advance academia’s economic and social impact while improving teaching and research.

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