The Innovation Teams Enterprise (iTeams)

Real Problem-solving with Technology —  Scaling Up Deep Tech To Impact.

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In iTeams we shape technology to solve real world problems and invent uncharted paths forward.

Since iTeams in its current version began a decade ago, we’ve shepherded to impact more than 200 MIT advances from all fields. Some 40 new companies powered by deep tech have emerged.

Nearly all of them have thrived.


iTeams has been credited with cracking the “lab to impact” problem. But there is more to iTeams...

We promote a different way to understand and appreciate science and technology as tools for unraveling problems and inventing uncharted paths forward.

Startups may be a means to that end, but more startups is not the objective. Rather the objective is meaningful progress.

Our alumni become skilled at diversifying and de-risking deep tech projects, exploring several possible “impact destinations”, and planning for scale. This all to explore a larger objective: taking a technology from lab to society to solve a meaningful problem. That is a significant scale-up endeavor. Were you to engage in one such endeavor you’d do well to plan to fail ONLY in ways that could not have been easily predicted. It’s up to you to prepare to make failure come as a surprise.

200+

Technologies

Research advances from MIT, Harvard, MGH, US Navy...

1000+

Alumni

Joining iTeams from all 5 MIT Schools, Harvard, BU, ... in a truly cross-discipline endeavor

One MIT

40+

New Deep Tech Companies

Conceived as diversified, robust, and scalable organizations

In the Media

“Marketwatch”: What investors and everyone else get wrong about innovation.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Luis Perez-Breva.

Bloomberg Technology Live TV interview with Emily Chang and Selina Wang

Mark Bidwell interviews Luis Perez-Breva on the Innovation Ecosystem Podcast

Quartz: The only real Measure of Success for a startup is not to stay a startup...

MIT Sloan:Being ‘Productively Wrong’”

The Politics Guys Podcast: “MIT's Luis Perez-Breva on Innovation,”

Wharton Business: “Luis Perez-Breva on Innovation Navigation”

Spectrum MIT: “Prototyping Real World Problems”

Building an Innovating Bookshelf

Entrepreneur Media: “Are You Actually Innovating, or Just Practicing Entrepreneurship”

MIT Technology Review: “You’re Probably Wrong”

In the Balance: “Artificial Intelligence – Friend or Foe?”

“5 things everyone gets wrong about artificial intelligence and what it means for our future”

The Future of Work: “Artificial Intelligence: Debunking Myth from Reality”

Don’t be alarmed, but you’re probably using the term “AI” wrong

“Sans vouloir vous alarmer, vous employez probablement mal le terme d'intelligence artificielle”
 

The MIT Course

Real experience

Team up with peers from all across the Institute and Labs to find a roadmap to scale for actual research breakthroughs

Tame real world problems

Uncover a problem worth solving and plan a robust scale-up roadmap to a technology organization that solves it.

Learn skills you can practice

We'll discuss technology malleability and evaluation, diversification, roadmapping, active de-risking, scale-up, strategy, intellectual property, organization building...

Long-lasting connections

You’ll exchange views with select members from our community (innovators, investors, entrepreneurs, executives, philanthropists, and others) who share our resolve for technology to play a meaningful role in society.

Beyond entrepreneurship

Most other courses conflate innovation and entrepreneurship: "guess a product, learn to pitch it". We don’t. In iTeams, everything is a variable.

Beyond startups

We are admittedly skeptical about the ongoing startup fad; we view startups as but one possible means to a loftier end aimed at truly removing obstacles to progress. We care about that end, and we encourage you to explore.

Giving humans superpowers

We attack problem solving hands-on. We use and shape technology to solve problems that matter—giving humans superpowers.

A scale-up journey

We do not constrain the path to impact; we simply expect you to keep an open mind. You’ll learn to innovate for impact anywhere, beginning with whatever resources you have and to communicate meaningfully across disciplinary divides to materialize an innovating agenda.

After iTeams

Next time you engage in a new bold project, innovation, or entrepreneurship it will feel like déjà-vu

Our thousand plus alumni have gone on to apply the skills they honed in iTeams in a wide variety of endeavors. Some have joined new companies emerging from their iTeams projects or discovered technologies on their own and later founded new companies.

Others have joined forward-thinking venture development groups in industry and venture capital, or joined technology investment firms, technology strategy firms, and nonprofit organizations committed to finding technologically savvy solutions to some of the world’s most vexing problems.

Still others have gone on to apply the principles underlying iTeams to build a new breed of technology commercialization labs in industry, the military, and academia.

©2008-2019 - Luis Perez-Breva, PhD, MIT