Talking about the past, startup coach Hans (former design hipster at Philips Design) told us last week that the way student teams work in innoSpace is damn similar to the way of working at the old Natlab and Philips Design. That’s a surefire guarantee of innovation (though alas not of success). 

A melting pot of backgrounds and disciplines that keep coming across each other and learning by working together on the challenges of tomorrow. It sounds so simple, right? But it isn’t. The design of ‘hands-on interdisciplinary’ courses has only just begun and the addition of cases from industry to the mix is happening slowly but surely. 

Never thought we’d be promoting a course

Wait. What the *bleep* is ‘hands-on interdisciplinary working’? To use the most concrete terms, here’s an example (never thought wed ever be promoting a course, but hey): a special Innovation Space Project course (1ZM150) is in the making under the leadership of our science captain Isabelle Reymen. On this course, concrete projects/ideas that start life in startups and industry will be screened by Master’’ s students for their technological and commercial feasibility. This example is ‘hands-on’ because it has a real-world focus; it is ‘interdisciplinary’ because students from multiple departments are involved, and it’s a real winner because the results will be available to the companies for immediate use. 

This is the kind of challenge we are going to set up. For the observant viewer: some AMIGO guiding robots can already be seen in the Atlas-leaks. This might be a fun challenge: why not let the students of Engineering Design build a guiding robot instead of a rescue robot so it can point lost campus visitors in the right direction? We will pass the idea along to the chief of Engineering Design. 

Obstacles to innovation

And before we close: JimFit (the fit hockey boys who brought you the body movement sensor) are still recruiting (TBK, WTB, EE). They have signed up their first customer (yippee!) and now want to move ahead at full speed. Email Cas if you are interested in having a coffee with them sometime. You might want to go ahead and join these guys in their mission. For that cup of coffee, by the way, you are still going to have to borrow Huub’s pass, but hey, obstacles like this are all part and parcel of innovation. 

Students Tom Selten (Innovation Sciences) and Bas Verkaik (Mechanical Engineering) are very much involved with the TU/e innovation Space. They will be blogging about what's really going on within the four walls of the Gaslab, where the hotspot of innovation is located.