Business Intelligence
May 10, 2010
Art Meets Science Meets Business at VCU’s DaVinci Center
What do you get when you take the elegance of art, the technical know-how of the engineering discipline and mix it up with some business acumen? You get the DaVinci Center at VCU and it’s the next big thing in innovation in the Richmond region.
A collaboration of VCU’s Schools of the Arts, Business, and Engineering, VCU’s da Vinci Center for Innovation strives to be a collegiate model for learning and catalyzing innovation and technology-based entrepreneurship through interdisciplinary collaboration.
Every semester the Center coordinates the da Vinci Project Course, where students from the Schools of the Arts, Business, and Engineering are formed into teams and work collaboratively on a product design or a product development challenge posed by an industry partner. The truly unique interdisciplinary learning experience prepares students for management roles in the global, technology-driven workplace of the 21st Century. Corporate partners benefit from the opportunities to tap fresh, innovative thinking; recruit top VCU graduates; and network with corporate partners. 2009-2010 partners include Alfa Laval, Altria Client Services, Boehringer Ingelheim, Capital One, MWV, Science Museum of Virginia, and State of Virginia.
In fall 2010, the Center will launch an Undergraduate Certificate in Product Innovation. This Certificate allows undergraduate students in the schools of the Arts, Business and Engineering to develop competency in the area of product innovation. Employing an interdisciplinary perspective that embodies concepts from each of the three schools, students receive a robust learning experience that leads to an understanding of the challenges associated with and means for managing product design, product development and new-product introduction endeavors. The da Vinci Project Course serves as the capstone experience.
The Center has received support and is planning to launch a Master of Product Innovation in fall 2011, pending State Council of Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) approval. The Master of Product Innovation is a two year program that builds on a student’s undergraduate degree by covering advanced topics in the product innovation arena. The uniqueness of the program is its coverage of product innovation from an interdisciplinary perspective, bringing in learning from VCU’s Schools of the Arts, Business, and Engineering to more fully develop an advanced competency in product innovation. The program includes a yearlong Master’s Project to be completed in VCU’s da Vinci Center for Innovation to give students a real product development experience. Projects may be company-sponsored or student-initiated. Companies are encouraged to send employees through the program so that these employees through the Master of Product Innovation program can delve into specific product innovation solutions on behalf of the company.
The da Vinci Center has plans to offer a Product Innovation Boot Camp to assist companies in jumpstarting their innovation practices. The Boot Camp represents an accelerated collaborative ideation initiative under the auspices of VCU’s Corporate Education Program and faculty of the da Vinci Center for Innovation. The program covers conceptualizing, refining, and finalizing new product offerings through an Arts Business, and Engineering interdisciplinary lens.
For more information about VCU’s da Vinci Center for Innovation, please contact:
Kenneth B. Kahn, Ph.D.
Professor and Director, daVinci Center for Innovation
Virginia Commonwealth University
Phone: (804) 828-9944
E-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Article Archives
Assisting Your Business
Greater Richmond Partnership, Inc.
The Greater Richmond Partnership is a public-private economic development agency committed to helping to grow the Greater Richmond economy through the attraction of high quality jobs and new capital investment, the retention of existing businesses, and the continued improvement of the region's business climate.