USC's New Institute for Innovation

Krisztina Holly wants to tap the vein of innovation that lives on university campuses to benefit society as a whole

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Krisztina Holly is a woman on a mission. The founding director of the prestigious Deshpande Center—which, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had funded research and connected MIT's innovators with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to make ideas a commercial reality—left the East Coast last year for the sunnier shores of Los Angeles. Her new focus? To change the way the University of Southern California thinks about commercializing innovation, as vice-provost and executive director of the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation, which officially opens for business Mar. 28.

Previously known as SITeC, or the Stevens Institute for Technology Commercialization, and housed in the Viterbi School of Engineering, this represents more than just a name change: It signals a shift within the university to broaden its focus on innovation from what has, up to now, been a fairly tech-heavy emphasis.

Tech transfer has been a cash cow for universities in recent years (providing a way to make money from the patenting and licensing of products) but Holly wants to look past what she describes as "Google (GOOG) envy"—an earnest desire to re-create the staggering success Stanford had with its two man startup—to bring other departments into the innovation mix.

Positive Social Impact

By focusing so firmly on patents and licensing, she argues, universities and educational establishments are missing a more fundamental aspect of innovation, which can come from myriad, previously untapped sources and which can be used to benefit society as a whole.

As such, USC Stevens will take a more holistic approach, working with all of the 17 schools within the college, including the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Cinematic Arts. And while there's currently much discussion about what innovation really means in a business context, her plan is to focus on ideas that not only make business sense but will have some kind of positive social impact (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/12/07, "The Innovation Backlash").

As USC prepared to formally inaugurate its new institute with a day-long exhibition of work by faculty members and students, BusinessWeek.com staff writer Kerry Miller sat down with Krisztina Holly to discuss her plans. Edited excerpts from their conversation follow:

Can you explain what you mean by "taking an idea and getting it into society"?

It's about more than just the ideas. It's about empowering innovators. We are introducing a very integrated approach that I don't think any other university has done. We are taking traditional technology transfer functions—and we are also providing educational programs for both faculty and students and providing connections and mentoring and showcasing their innovations, all under one roof.

What makes USC Stevens different from other university-sponsored innovation initiatives?

One of the unique things is that we're under the Office of the Provost, and we have a huge commitment from the provost to be a university-wide resource. We have 16 staff now, and we're growing to more than 25 over the next year. USC has 17 professional schools and many different research programs.

So we're not just working with our engineering school and with the School of Medicine, but also with a top-notch cinematic arts school and music school, and a school for communications. We are able to leverage all of these and really redefine what it means to do innovation. We're not just focusing on technological innovations, although clearly those will continue to be a very strong resource.

So what kind of commercial innovations will you get from, say, the school for communications or music or cinematic arts?

We have a lot of video gaming and a lot of digital media—and we also have students who are very eager to learn about how to get ideas out into the market.