2017 Innovator Award Announcement
2017 Innovator Award
Winner Announced
University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management Announced as 2017 Innovator Award Recipient for their Medical Industry Valuation Lab
The MBA Roundtable Innovator Award was created in 2011 to promote educational initiatives that advance innovation in MBA education and acknowledge the institutions that drive change in the field. The Innovator Award raises awareness of ongoing continuous curricular and co-curricular improvements and educates employers, business school leaders, and faculty about innovative practices of best-in-class MBA programs. For business schools, the Award publically recognizes their leadership to initiate and achieve curricular reform.
Initiatives are first evaluated on concept, execution, and impact; finalist schools are identified and interviewed and one school is selected as the award recipient. Any business school that offers an MBA degree and has taken initiative such as program revision, course content or delivery changes, or co-curricular experiential learning opportunity is eligible to participate. Since its inception, over 75 business schools have submitted their initiatives. Finalist and recipient school initiatives cover every aspect of the content-pedagogy-format curricular framework with impact reach locally and globally, and with benefits to the learner, business and community.
Finalist schools for 2017 were the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s world’s first MOOC-Based stackable MBA and the University of Alabama’s STEM Path to the MBA Program.
"The MBA Roundtable was blessed with many excellent submissions this year for the Innovator Award. The choice was difficult but in the end one submission stood above the rest – the Carlson School at the University of Minnesota. What stood out was how many exciting elements were contained in their program. Significant academic learning – check. Unique program – check. Experiential learning – check. Impact on the local business community – check. Career enhancement for participants – check. In the end, the checkmarks just added up to Innovator Award for the Carlson School. Check." Joe Fox, President, MBA Roundtable
About the University of Minnesota’s Valuation Lab:
The valuation lab is MILI’s signature course and represents interdisciplinary, experiential learning at its finest. It brings together students from across the University of Minnesota campus to work in cross-functional teams conducting rapid market assessments for new medical innovations, helping evaluate lifesaving ideas and streamlining the time to market for critical new products.
“This award is a testament to MILI’s unique position to shape teaching and leadership in the medical industry,” says Pinar Karaca-Mandic, the new director of MILI and an associate professor in the Finance Department. “Through the valuation lab, MILI provides an opportunity for the students’ academic toolbox to intersect with industry insights and applications.”
Since launching in 2008, the Medical Industry Valuation Lab has assessed more than 300 medical innovations for organizations that include Fortune 500 companies, hospitals, medical device manufacturers, startups, and nonprofits, as well as individual inventors.
Students in the valuation lab produce more than 30 analyses a year, gaining valuable hands-on experience, while clients get a top-to-bottom breakdown of their medical technology and its prospects in the market. This kind of mutual student-industry benefit is at the core of MILI’s mission.
The valuation lab has also extended its reach to the global stage: Through a partnership with the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship and the Karolinska Institute, a Swedish medical school, MILI has created a two-week, cross-cultural lab in Sweden. It’s also replicated that model in Shanghai and the Bay Area, a hub of medical device innovation and the host of January’s Global Valuation Lab.
Through MILI, the Carlson MBA Program provides specialized training, knowledge, and experience in the medical industry to prepare students for leadership-track careers. The majority of students in the valuation lab come from the MBA programs (full-time and part-time), but there are also nursing, medicine, law, engineering, information technology, and other students thanks to memorandums of agreement with eight collegiate units at the University.
2017 Innovator Award Announcement (L to R)Jeff Bieganek - Executive Director, MBA Roundtable; Phil Miller - Assistant Dean for MBA & MS Programs, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota; Tina Mabley - Assistant Dean and Director, Full-time Texas MBA Program, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin; Joe Fox – President, MBA Roundtable (Photo Credit: Jim Roese Photography)
