NUvention shows students real world context

Chicago, Illinois – Last month, Northwestern University tapped Insight Product Development’s decades-long heritage in successful medical device development to give its graduate students real world context for what it takes to successfully innovate in the complex and highly regulated medical space. As part of a two-hour on-site class, Insight gave master’s program students from the University’s Kellogg school of business, McCormick School of Engineering, medical and law schools an introductory overview of Insight’s approach to aligning business needs with user needs, and developing medical devices from concept feasibility through technology viability.

“Our ongoing participation with Northwestern aligns perfectly with our strong desire to advance innovation and the local health tech ecosystem to improve lives,” says Steve McPhilliamy, Insight’s director of design and the executive director of Insight Accelerator Labs. “The core value of this program for us is being in the fortunate position to help the next generation of entrepreneurs successfully navigate the challenging realm of medical device development by sharing what we’ve learned over nearly three decades of successfully innovating within the space ourselves.”

Northwestern students’ onsite experience was led by Insight as part of the University’s NUvention Medical program, which is designed to expose students to the entire innovation and entrepreneurial life cycle, and help them create new medical technologies and build viable businesses around their innovations. For the past two years, Insight has contributed to the program’s curriculum and led several classes to provide students with real world context and guidance for technology development and entrepreneurial success.

“The Insight class was a phenomenal opportunity for NUvention students to see how a leading design firm helps their clients innovate firsthand,” says Michael Marasco, Northwestern University’s director of the Farley Center for Entrepreneruship and Innovation. “The Insight team did a great job helping students understand the challenges of evolving ideas and needs and into actual product solutions.”

Following the class lecture, students were given a guided tour of Insight's three-story, 40,000ft Ravenswood facilities, including the company’s engineering, design and research offices, dry lab, model making and prototyping shop, observation facility used by Insight researchers, advanced 3D printing capabilities, the Insight innovation and patent gallery, and client event & meeting space.

About Insight Product Development
Insight is a design innovation consultancy that uncovers innovation opportunities for clients, designs the technologies and experiences that support them, and drives their development through commercialization. Headquartered in Chicago, our award-winning innovations span dozens of industries, reach more than 30 countries, have earned hundreds of patents, and favorably impacted millions. Our work is informed by a decades-long product development heritage serving highly regulated industries with the most exacting standards. Insight culture allows our multi-discipline team to work as an agile unit to consistently deliver better business outcomes for clients. For more information visit http://www.insightpd.com.

About Insight Accelerator Labs
Insight Accelerator Labs (IAL) is the first medical device accelerator in the Midwestern United States, and was launched by Insight Product Development in early 2013 with three distinct goals: to help drive innovation and business growth, fuel the momentum of Chicago’s health tech start-up ecosystem, and improve people’s lives by advancing meaningful technology toward commercialization. For up to 18 months, IAL member startups receive expert mentoring, product development services from one of the most experienced development teams in the world, grant and award application assistance and extensive infrastructure support to translate their technology into commercial success. For more information, visit http://www.insightpd.com/insight-labs.

Source: Insight Product Development