Spark! a Key Component of Innovate@BU Initiative

Funded by a partnership of the University and a group of alumni, BU is starting the new initiative Innovate@BU, designed to draw students and ideas from across the University. As innovation, product design, and entrepreneurship become critical skills for a growing number of disciplines, the University hopes to use this initiative to bring students together from across many existing assets for innovation at BU, including the Institute’s own BU Spark! 

Innovate@BU will be headed by Executive Director Gerald Fine, who founded and led Boston University’s very successful Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC) in the College of Engineering. Siobhan O’Mahony, a Questrom associate professor of strategy and innovation, will serve as Director of Research & Curriculum. Innovate@BU will be staffed by a team of professionals and supported by faculty from across the University.

Previously a Radio Shack store at the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and St. Mary’s Street, the BUild Lab: IDG Capital Student Innovation Center will be a 6,000-square-foot home and student hub for Innovate@BU. The space will have wraparound glass walls, plenty of team meeting rooms and student workspaces, oversized video screens for presentations, and lots of open space for hackathons, accelerators, classes, and hands-on workshops. Expected to open in January 2018, the BUild Lab will be a place where students can connect with advisors, find funding sources, collaborate with other students on projects, and get help with matters from design and prototyping to legal advice and marketing.

At the initiatives core are the Student Innovation Center, curriculum development in entrepreneurship and the innovation enterprise, student start-up creation of both for-profit and non-profit ventures, business engagement, research in innovation and entrepreneurship to engage faculty and scholars, and wayfinding, marketing and branding developed by Innovate@BU to guide students into the innovation community. Using Innovate@BU as a portal, students will be able to reach the many assets for innovation and entrepreneurship that already exist at Boston University, including programs such as BU Spark! in the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering and the College of Arts & Sciences, Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC) in the College of Engineering, Media Ventures program in the College of Communication, and Entrepreneurship & Intellectual Property Clinic in the School of Law.