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AbstractIn 2011, the U.S. National Science Foundation created the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program in an effort to explore ways to translate the results of the academic research the agency has funded into new products, processes, devices, or services and move them to the marketplace. The agency established a 3-tier structure to support the implementation of the I-Corps concept. Selected I-Corps teams consisting of the principal investigator, an entrepreneurial lead, and an industry mentor participate in a 7-week accelerated version of the Lean Launchpad methodology that was first developed by Steve Blank at Stanford University. Participating teams engage in talking to potential customers, partners, and competitors and address the challenges and the uncertainty of creating successful ventures. I-Corps sites were set up to promote selected aspects of innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems at the grantee institutions. I-Corps Regional Nodes were charged with recruiting I-Corps teams in a larger geographical area as well as stimulating a new culture of academic entrepreneurship in the institutions in their area of influence. This Topical Review describes the experiences and the impact of the New York City Regional Innovation Node, which is led by the City University of New York, in partnership with New York University and Columbia University. Graphic abstract 

Abstract Professionals need to collaborate with multiple stakeholders in product development to stay competitive and to innovate. Through their values and mission, companies develop a specific working environment that can lead to the development of design methods and tools. In this article, we study design team dynamics of professional engineers working in two different organizations. We aim at identifying differences in team behaviors between teams drawn from two different organizations. The goal is twofold. At a theoretical level, we aim at gaining a better understanding of the effect of work culture on design team behaviors. At a methodological level, we explore whether grouping teams from different organizations into a single larger sample to obtain better reliability is relevant. To do this, we compared two cohorts of teams based on which company engineers worked at. Both companies are international organizations employing more than 50,000 collaborators worldwide. Teams of three engineers worked on designing a next-generation personal assistant and entertainment system for the year 2025. We analyzed each team’s design interactions and behaviors using quantitative tools (Multiple Factor Analysis and Correspondence Analysis). Results from this exploratory analysis highlight different behaviors between cohorts as well as a common overall approach to team design thinking. 

Abstract Designers faced with complex design problems use decomposition strategies to tackle manageable sub-problems. Recomposition strategies aims at synthesizing sub-solutions into a unique design proposal. Design theory describes the design process as a combination of decomposition and recomposition strategies. In this paper, we explore dynamic patterns of decomposition and recomposition strategies of design teams. Data were collected from 9 teams of professional engineers. Using protocol analysis, we examined the dominance of decomposition and recomposition strategies over time and the correlations between each strategy and design processes such as analysis, synthesis, evaluation. We expected decomposition strategies to peak early in the design process and decay overtime. Instead, teams maintain decomposition and recomposition strategies consistently during the design process. We observed fast iteration of both strategies over a one hour-long design session. The research presented provides an empirical foundation to model the behaviour of professional engineering teams, and first insights to refine theoretical understanding of the use decomposition and recomposition strategies in design practice.