Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions / week
First session / 2 hours
Second session / 3.5 hours (flipped classroom)
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this course.
Class Goals and Expectations
Our goal is to equip you with lifelong skills for innovating. We do so by reproducing real-world innovating conditions. If we succeed, next time you engage in innovation it will feel like déjà-vu.
Specifically, in iTeams, you’ll learn how to manage uncertainty, how to scale up an idea out of your head all the way up to impact, how to specify technology to solve problems that matter, and how to communicate meaningfully across disciplinary divides to push an innovating agenda. These are skills you can practice and get better at over time. At the root of it all lie two rather simple principles common to finance and engineering: In the face of uncertainty, diversification is the only rational choice; and you solve problems no one has solved before by imagining the problem solved and working backwards from that, not from some wild guess at a solution.
iTeams alumni have used these skills and principles in myriad ways in their careers. Some have teamed up with MIT labs to move technology to impact. iTeams students have gone on to create a host of companies, including LiquiGlide, Lantos, Manus Biotechnology, Viznu, Eta devices, Arctic Sand, Myomo, C2sense, Pipeguard Robotics, Revivemed, LuxLabs, Open Water, and others, as well as several ongoing “proto startups.” Others have used what they learned to find another technology to start a venture (Ayar Labs, Quanttus, etc.); many have gone on to use the skills they acquired in the class to found startups of their own or participate in early-stage technology ventures, pursue scientific careers in academia or industry, enter venture capital, join venture creation labs, and innovate within established companies.
The iTeams experience is valuable across many career paths: finance, business, policy, social impact, science, engineering, and beyond. The principles are the basis for several innovating factories. iTeams is valuable to participating labs, too; they help us make this educational experience possible, expose their graduate students to tech-to-impact, and discover opportunities for impact ahead for their work.
Class Structure
Project and Team Formation
By the third week, after we’ve clarified what we all understand about technology and the problem, described how to define an exploration, and the skills involved in exploring for opportunities, we’ll present the technology challenges available this semester. Some will be presented directly by labs. We’ll help you come ready to ask and interact with lab members. After that, you’ll have to declare your project preferences. We will form teams based on your preferences, feedback from the labs, and our commitment to offer you a cross-disciplinary experience.
iTeams projects begin with your choice of a technology or problem and conclude with your reporting on clear and actionable next steps for an organization that solves a real-world problem. Your goal is to conquer a problem (being right about how at the start is immaterial). You’ll report on a space ripe with opportunities for impact. Whether you worked with a technology from a lab or chose to work on one of the problems we scope for you every semester, your final report will have to outline the way in which technology offers a provable advantage and enough of a competitive head start to ensure the survival of an organization that solves a problem, including the necessary steps to seize that advantage.
We ask that you approach the project with a mix of enthusiasm, skepticism, and spirit of inquiry (not the way advocates or consultants would approach the projects)—much as you would if you wanted to figure out whether you should expend your own resources on it. After all, there’s no greater waste than the waste of your most precious resource—your own time!.
Use of Class Meeting Times
We have two scheduled times each week. The first session is used to introduce the week’s content, and the second “flipped classroom” session is used to discuss the content and for hands-on work in which we will collectively apply that content to the term’s projects. These discussion sessions are highly interactive and choreographed to deliver on cross-team learning objectives.
Readings
Throughout the semester, there are various links to readings, lecture notes, and handouts.
Course Text
Innovating: A Doer’s Manifesto for Starting from a Hunch, Prototyping Problems, Scaling Up, and Learning to Be Productively Wrong by Luis Perez-Breva. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780262536127. [MIT Press]
Presentations
iTeams presentations are not for pitch practice; they are made to audiences ready to give feedback.
- “Being Wrong” Presentation
- Mid-Term Evaluation
- Mingling Event Presentation / Middle School Presentation
- Final One-on-One Presentation
Final Deliverables
- Final Technology-Problem Whitepaper and Scale-Up Report
- Final Short Presentation (mingling event)
- Final One-on-One Presentation
Grading
- Assignments, presentations, and midterm report (30%)
- Team final report and one-on-one presentation (30%)
- Keeping tabs with us weekly, class participation, and peer performance reviews (30%)
- Your feedback as we create a global iTeams and a lasting virtual community (10%)
