We help faculty to learn best practices from each other. We help students by providing entrepreneurial experiences. We help companies tap into this community of faculty and students.
The Applied Innovation Institute was originally founded as the Berkeley Mobile International Collaborative (BMIC) in 2009. The name was changed in the fall of 2012 to reflect the need to extend the idea of learning entrepreneurship through competition beyond the field of mobile and to create an academic side of the organization that would assist faculty around the globe in the field of entrepreneurship. The concept started life as a Mobile Innovation & Entrepreneurship class, taught by Ken Singer at UC Berkeley in the Fall of 2008 in which students competed in the same way that companies compete for investment dollars. After two successful years of “beta testing” the program, BMIC was formed by Ken Singer, Paul Nerger, and Bill Washburn to take the concepts of the competitive nature of the course and turn it into global competition between universities worldwide. Today, the Institute advances a broad range of application areas by connecting student, faculty, and industry leaders. With today’s extended board of directors and a faculty from over 25 leading global organizations, the Institute hosts competitions, corporate education, and advisory practice in areas from mobile, data analytics, public media, technology management, and entrepreneurship.
