Innovators’ Practice

The press described the initiative as “Harvard’s real-world obstacle course for practicing innovation.” Student teams developed tangible projects with real-world, measurable impact by term’s end. Many teams won awards, including the Dean’s 100K Cultural Entrepreneurship Challenge and various funded fellowships to continue developing their ideas beyond the classroom.

The class operated two streams: The Innovation Practice, where teams developed projects using human-centered design methods, and a Discussion Seminar on leading creative projects and building collaborative cultures. The course fostered an innovation culture similar to leading design firms like IDEO, simulating the professional challenges teams of innovators face together.

Core challenge: “Develop a tangible project that excites you, is designed to fit into and potentially improve people’s lives, and has real world, measurable impact by the end of the term.” Teams were guided through a multi-disciplinary, behavior-centric design process built on approaches used at IDEO, Continuum, and Stanford Institute of Design.

Student team projects included MOOVU (curated furniture marketplace), PARK-N-GO (real-time parking availability system), CRANBERRY (virtual office dashboard for team communication across timezones), TRIPPOCAMPUS (mentor-mentee network for college selection), and WAVE (break redesign application addressing information overload).