Wellspring Blog

There are a lot of organizations out there that help build and strengthen relationships between universities and corporations, bridging the gap between theory and application. These relationships are critical for both parties. For corporate innovation teams, establishing academic partnerships is a... Read More

Every so often we ask our community to sound off on popular topics in innovation and share their best tips, tricks, and advice in hopes that their answers may inspire others in the field. We’ve gathered these insights by email, over phone calls, at events and roundtables, and catching up with... Read More

Even just a few years ago, conventional wisdom held that “innovation” and “operations” didn’t belong in the same sentence. Performance targets ruin the creative impulse. Science needs space, time, and freedom to flourish. Innovation can never be bottled into an efficient, machine-like operation. Read More

Healthcare, like many other fields, is an increasingly collaborative industry, with most organizations looking outside their internal silos for new ideas, innovations, and expertise. As we’ve highlighted in other works, co-patenting—when two or more parties collaborate to obtain a patent—has risen... Read More

When most people think of IoT and construction, they will think about newly developed “smart homes” outfitted with security systems and a network of cameras. Or futuristic thermostats with the ability to learn from patterns of behavior and adjust the temperature automatically. However, most of... Read More

There’s a repeated conversation that happens among corporate leaders, whispered in the halls of conferences and passed among friends like a rite of passage: “Watch out for the corporate antibodies,” goes the refrain. “They’ll kill your innovations faster than anything else.” Read More

University technology transfer has been around for decades and is a mature function in most institutions. In contrast, corporate relations – defined as those offices that manage all company engagement and not only fundraising – is a relatively new field. In the vast majority of cases, these two... Read More

Evidence of the global waste crisis - and its causes - are everywhere. No corner of our world is safe, from littered beaches on a secluded islands to overpopulated cities with garbage bins overflowing with cardboard boxes and packaging materials. While there’s no denying that prepackaged and... Read More

Open innovation has hit the insurance sector, and many of the established giants are feeling the pressure. With industry giants like Nationwide, State Farm, Allstate, and AXA forming internal incubators and innovation programs to deal with the challenge from upstart competitors, the importance of... Read More

WITH GUEST SPEAKER ERIN SPRING DIRECTOR OF NEW VENTURES AT GOODYEAR Projecting the future is hard enough. You’re dealing with incomplete information, fighting multiple sources of bias, and trying to integrate a wide range of weak signals. Building the future is tougher still: tensions with the... Read More