Academics: Get a Bachelors of Innovation

Building off the increasing attention being given to innovation in the business world, the University of Colorado announced that it is building a new family of degrees in Innovation in order to start preparing students for careers that require innovative solutions and creative thinking to solve complex problems. The program will combine law, business, entrepreneurship and engineering components (the Innovation Core) in order to give students the most well-rounded approach to innovation as it applies to the real world. Students will work on projects for partner corporations and put their academic skills to the test for companies facing complex problems.

This is a damn cool idea. If properly executed, I think this has the potential to give students a great, broad education in how to approach business issues in an innovative nature. Aki and I have discussed how many companies, particularly more traditional ones, view the very word "innovation" as resulting in some sort Star-Trek, wild-eyed idea with no foundation in their business reality. A focused academic program in innovation could help to reshape corporate America's thinking on the topic and get them to realize that the small, incremental changes businesses make in order to separate themselves from their competitive set (such as Bank of America's wildly successful Keep the Change program, which has netted +2.5 million new consumers in just over a year) are just as- if not more- innovative than any "game changing", blue-sky idea. I would imagine that, given corporations hesitation for new things (even non-traditional academic degrees) this may get off to a slow start, but I think the potential could be great if done properly. Bachelors of Innovation-- there's a phrase that jumps off a resume.