If You Build It, Will They Innovate? Investigating the Design and Operation of Higher Education Innovation Centers

Abstract

This dissertation examines how design teams have created and users have occupied spaces intended to support interdisciplinary collaboration, connections to the community, and innovation activity on higher education academic campuses. It combines several forms of investigation, including a review of academic and professional literature, an inventory of existing buildings, an evaluation of building assessments, and a case study of an exemplar innovation center using interviews with 50 occupants and design team members to evaluate the design and operation of the emerging postsecondary innovation center typology. Through these investigations, three themes emerged. First, although proponents of innovation centers suggest that “if you build it [an innovation center], they will innovate”, most occupants already had begun to innovate prior to visiting the innovation center. Second, occupants did report that the design of the case study innovation center did aid many of their innovation activities, particularly their informal collaborations with peers and mentors. Third, contextual factors can increase or reduce the extent to which occupants find innovation center buildings useful, including building location, occupant characteristics, tensions between design team goals and user needs (e.g., transparency vs. privacy), and a lack of a universal design approach. Based on these findings, a series of considerations are proposed to support future postsecondary innovation center design team members.