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:

    • 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:

    • 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:

    • 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).