Research Highlights

National Science Foundation Grant Awarded to Professor Hila Lifshitz-Assaf to Support Research on Open Innovation

Hila Lifshitz-Assaf
Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, NYU Stern Assistant Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences, and Zoe Szajnfarber, Assistant Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering at George Washington University, were awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) INSPIRE grant, totaling just under $1 million, to support their research on open innovation.

This four-year grant will provide funding for the team’s “INSPIRE: Expanding Open Innovation Methods to Complex Engineered Systems” project, which examines the implementation of open innovation methods – those that solicit external input through such means as prizes, challenges and crowdsourcing – to increasingly complex problems. The INSPIRE project will consider ways Research and Development (R&D) experts can organize current processes to optimize innovation. This research has a number of implications for firms and agencies seeking to organize their research enterprise and incentivize their employees.