Innovation Accelerators
Innovation Accelerators (IA) provide participants a creative, idea- generating environment with no preconceptions. This is the spirit of entrepreneurship. Within the accelerator’s discovery environment, a constructive screening process is followed producing valuable, data-driven, actionable solutions. FSOE’s Innovation Accelerators have tailored configurations that maximize the participants’ goals:
Organizational Innovation Accelerators (O-IA)
Sponsored by organizations to infuse a new and/or enhancement management style to maximize performance that will increase ROI. Within the O-IA, participants learn, practice and master entrepreneurial spirit-driven working styles. This may be challenging internally. Examples of O-IA:
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- Scrum teams and agile project management leadership
- Internal shark tank competitions
- Cross-functional project teams facilitating hybrid organizational departments/divisions/areas creation
- Multiple stakeholders pursuing community redevelopment in a unified approach
Academic Innovation Accelerators (A-IA)
University sponsored with a combination of students, faculty and academic researchers. The focus is a new area of discovery. The outcomes are research publications and the advancement of scientific principles. Examples of A-IA:
Digital health technology discoveries that advance:
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- Drug discovery
- Improved healthcare access with lower costs (e.g., rural, remote communities)
- Addressing social determinants of healthcare (SDOH)
- Clinical trials
- Artificial Intelligence/NLP bias reduction
Organizational & Academic Innovation Accelerators (O-AIA)
- Organizations and carefully matched graduate students co-create a creative data-driven, actionable solution for high priority organizational challenges. Examples of O-AIA:
- New market entry: Plan for U.S. snacking company expanding into the Asian market. Global research to determine Asian consumers’ snacking behaviors leading to minor product ingredient adjustments and customized positioning/messaging.
- Efficient hospital clinic management: A new scheduling system to maximize clinician and patient time during clinical trial visits. Students created and tested scenarios from a major, research health center’s performance data yielding dramatic efficiency increases.
- New product feature: Sustainable/renewable wind energy turbines’ new feature was tested and released. A joint distribution and communication strategy for (1) wind farm developers/owners, (2) power companies, and (3) consumers were developed and launched.
Growth Accelerators (GA)
For early-stage start-ups that have proven market validation. The GA is for mentoring/coaching their business plan and paths to investments.
Examples of GA:
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- Improved literacy for manufacturing plants’ production employees: AI powered in-the-moment device to ensure comprehension of safety guidelines and manuals. Use case demonstrated improved safety and OSHA operating standards. Employees reported higher levels of on-the-job satisfaction leading to retention.
- Per-diem nurse scheduling efficiency and cost reduction: Per-diem nurse database with pre-qualifications/licenses/ certifications available to nurse manager/CMO/HR to identify available and eligible per-diem nurses within minutes. Reduces current time to find replacement staff, smoother on-the-floor nurse management, higher levels of patient care (less ‘short-handed’ conditions).