Late last month, Harvard Business School (HBS) Dean Nitin Nohria joined University President Drew Faust and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino to officially launch the new Harvard Innovation Lab, or i-lab, which is intended to foster entrepreneurial activities and deepen interactions between students at the business school and the university at large with faculty, entrepreneurs and the Boston community.
“The i-lab is an exciting new platform that visibly demonstrates a University-wide commitment to entrepreneurship and innovation,” Dean Nohria said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on November 18th. “Its very existence encourages members of the community to think differently about what is possible.”
The new i-lab is located on the first floor of Batten Hall at 125 Western Avenue on Harvard’s Allston campus, in a building that previously housed WGBH-TV’s studios. It features classrooms and meeting areas for both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as public areas and meeting rooms for project work.
The space will also be home to business development resources for companies, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, and other individuals in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood and Boston area and will host public lectures, panel discussions and presentations and networking events for student teams, local businesses and nonprofits.
“The Harvard Innovation Lab is a bridge between imagination and implementation,” Harvard President Faust said. “What we have done on Western Avenue is create a space that increases the likelihood of planned and unplanned encounters among our students, faculty, staff and members of Boston’s innovation community, a space where one ought to expect the unexpected.”
Mayor Menino, for his part, praised the new i-lab for embracing the idea of shared innovation he considers to be at the core of his administration’s agenda. “We’ve seen Boston’s entrepreneurial spirit take on new life with the growth of the Innovation District on the waterfront,” Menino said. “In Allston, the i-lab will build community between neighborhood entrepreneurs, students and faculty,” he continued, adding that it will also reenergize the building by giving neighbors a new place to collaborate.
To learn more about the i-lab, click here. For future i-lab events and activities, click here.
Read the full article: Harvard Business School Launches New Innovation Lab