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Universities as green innovators
Stanford University has long held a tradition of innovation. The legendary tech startups, such as Yahoo and Google, that were founded by Stanford students in its hallowed halls is now the stuff of legend in SIlicon Valley. (In fact, Sun Microsystems got their original name as an acronym for Stanford University Network.) Billions of dollars have literally walked off campus, yet this atmosphere of innovation continues today.
Other universities share in this tradition. At MIT, for example, alumni have founded 25,800 companies which generate revenues of about $1.9 trillion a year.
While you could argue that if Stanford had an agreement that gave them even one-tenth of 1 percent of anything created by their students, they would have an endless endowment worth billions. But perhaps this would scare off the future tech billionaires from ever matriculating in the first place. Instead, what if a university could utilize their students as an in-house R&D (research and development) laboratory? Students would still be free to profit from their inventions, but the institution could benefit from the ideas in some way.
At a symposium for The Earth Institute at Columbia University, I met Sam Harrington, marketing director for Ecovative Design. It turns out that a similar innovation is currently happening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in upstate New York. Instead of tech companies, they're developing a new wave of innovative materials. Ecovative was started by RPI students who developed an innovative foam material derived from mycelium (a.k.a. mushroom fungi) called EcoCradle. In its' current state, EcoCradle is a surprisingly affordable and effective alternative to oil-based Styrofoam. This "mushroom foam" could have thousands of potential uses.
Sam and I discussed the possibilities of eventually utilizing the foam as a natural, non-toxic and biodegradable alternative for building insulation. It could replace traditional, formaldehyde-based fiberglass. Imagine improving the indoor air and eliminating a known carcinogen from our buildings. Such bio-based materials will (eventually) radically improve the health and impact of our buildings. The challenge for Sam and small companies like his is finding real-world projects in which to test their creations.
Comments
Leveraging the creative potential of universities – and specifically students for what they can bring to the table – is an important issue in the area of green technology innovation. After reading Eric Corey Freed’s post I realize now more than ever that the people here on Stanford’s campus are some of the brightest in the world and imagine what they could accomplish if they came together with their different expertise to help in the innovation of green building. I agree with Freed that we should be encouraging a wide range of students in engineering, architecture and even political science to put their heads together to create new types of green building projects and technologies. Universities are perfect places to try new ideas and not be put down by the harsh realities of the business world.
Why should universities invest in fostering green innovators? First of all, the energy crisis and global warming are only getting worse. Huge amounts of energy are wasted by existing commercial and residential structures in the U.S. alone, and we should be trying to figure out how to make our homes, college dorms or work places more energy efficient. Universities can help by encouraging development of commercially viable green technologies.
On-campus, students and professionals can share ideas, collaborate, learn new things, devise innovative solutions and approaches and try them out. If they crash and burn then we just learn more for next time. I am a current student at Stanford University and we have many buildings these days that have the newest in energy efficient technologies. But what we really should do is allow students in various fields to take over the next building project and literally let them design it from the ground up. Some of this is already happening on college campuses. For example, the Center for Sustainable Building Research, at the University of Minnesota is doing game changing work where they develop new green building tech and campus greening techniques. At Cal, students and faculty work together at the Green Building Research Center, where they collaborate on a variety of commercial products. Lastly at Portland State they have the Green Building Research lab where student engineers and architects collaborated on the Green Modular Classroom, which was shown at Greenbuild 2012 in San Francisco.
Students have so many new ideas that they never get to explore. What if one of them has thought of something no one else has considered? Yes it’s easier and safer to go with existing green technologies, but that doesn’t advance thinking and technology. Fostering green innovators on campus will add greatly to the student experience, to the university as a whole, and to the community. Why not better utilize some of the greatest assets this country has in its university students?
these phrases refer to these links:
energy are wasted by existing commercial and residential structures--http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/commercial/about.html
Center for Sustainable Building Research--http://www.csbr.umn.edu/research.html
Green Building Research Center--http://greenbuildings.berkeley.edu/
Green Building Research lab--http://greenbuilding.pdx.edu/
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