Company Hosts NUvention Program Students at Chicago Facility
The evening of October 29th, Northwestern University tapped Insight’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 Director of Engineering Sean Corrigan, and Partner and Director of Business Development Mark Tunkel 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, 40,000-foot 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 3-D printing capabilities, the Insight innovation and patent gallery, and client event & meeting space.