Education

We talk with the Chief Product Officer at Coursera about recently-launched products — and how AI is impacting the business.

We talked with Naoto Mizuguchi, NEC X CFO about the evolution of its startup accelerator program, now called Elev X! Mizuguchi describes the updated venture studio model, success stories, focus areas, and long-term goals for the program.

When he first proposed building Sharpen, McGraw Hill’s app that has been called “the TikTok for studying,” Justin Singh didn’t know whether it would play well with the company’s target audience for the product — students looking for a new way to study that was more aligned with their lifestyle. 

With 600 buildings, nearly 20,000 employees, 25,000 students, and a fleet of vehicles, Harvard University oversees a vast amount of infrastructure. And the university is working to ensure that infrastructure ends its use of fossil fuels by 2050. We talk with Chief Sustainability Officer Heather Henriksen.

MIT’s InnovationHQ stands on the eastern edge of the university’s campus, amidst several on-going construction projects. On one side of the street, Google continues to expand its Cambridge office, and on the other is a building with the MIT-appropriate address of 314 Main Street. It houses a new Boeing R&D center, the MIT Press Bookstore, and the MIT Museum.

The CEO of the Boston-based nonprofit Power talks about customer-centricity; how it seeks to connect tech companies with visually-impaired users; and the importance of understanding the S-curve as you make the case for continued innovation.

Elaine Chen is the Cummings Family Professor of Practice and the Director of the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts University. We spoke with Chen as part of our IL Member Spotlight series, which profiles our members.

Merriam-Webster’s Chief Digital Officer Lisa Schneider shares insights on avoiding digital fatigue and getting a traditional company on board with a large-scale digital transformation. 

Three startups pitch their products including home robotics kits for students, a lightweight AR headset, and digital twins for brick-and-mortar stores…

Matthew Hulett, President of Language at the company, discusses how Rosetta Stone pivoted from a physical product to a subscription service…

With the rise of Zoom fatigue, enabling online workshops and training can be challenging. Nancy Tennant, formerly of Whirlpool Corp., shares 10 lessons for facilitating virtual innovation teams.

Experts in higher education share how they’ve tackled the challenges of 2020. Guests include Barnard President Sian Beliock and the co-CEO of edX, Adam Medros. 

How have teams pivoted to face the challenges of 2020? Rhett Alden of Elsevier discusses launching a COVID-19 Resource Center in four weeks. Innovators from Carhartt and CVS share insights.

Sian Beilock of Barnard College and Adam Medros of edX discuss how their organizations have pivoted to address the challenges that COVID-19 has created for higher education.

Artificial intelligence is a central topic for discussion and experimentation at many companies. But some are making more decisive moves, building capabilities around AI in a way that may create an important new kind of competitive advantage. This interview series features Wayfair, CSAA Insurance, Duolingo, and more.

At our Innovation Strategy for Nonprofits event, Arthur Daemmrich of the Smithsonian Institution and Panos Panay of Berklee College of Music discussed how their teams have been pivoting to offer educational experiences online.

In this installment of Innovation Answered: Essentials, Tendayi Viki offers a look at his most recent book and discusses the importance of the “privateer” attitude. 

Harvard Business School Professor Tsedal Neeley offers insights on new approaches to prototyping, and what happens when some people begin transitioning back to the office.

Paul LeBlanc, President of Southern New Hampshire University, discusses how colleges are managing the shift to online education and adapting during the coronavirus pandemic.

Can Houghton Mifflin Harcourt remake itself into a digital platform, distributing content, software, and cloud-based services to schools? 

Perry Hewitt joined Harvard University in 2009. The mission, as she describes it, was to help the university “be relevant and relatable in the digital world.” 

“Education is changing — there’s no denying that,” says Diana Stepner of Pearson plc. Here’s what the British publishing company is doing to connect with tech startups…

Mary Cullinane of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, talks about breaking down walls between print and digital products and hacking away at hierarchies, and being customer-centric.

We’re assembling collection of job descriptions for a wide array of innovation-related roles, including in the non-profit, government, and education sectors…