Princeton Innovation
Holy crap. Princeton decided to work with us. That’s pretty much exactly how I felt in spring 2024 when we began our engagement with Princeton’s newly instituted Office of Innovation. Frankly, that’s pretty much how I still feel.
Princeton had an Innovation Initiative for a few years running. Leadership decided to institutionalize it by making an Office of Innovation, knitting together three different research units – Tech Licensing and New Ventures, Strategic Partnerships & Engagement, Innovation Infrastructure & Programs – under a new Vice Dean for Innovation, Craig Arnold. I had a relationship with their Executive Director for Partnerships, Coleen Burrus, who had been both a colleague of mine at Northwestern and my alderperson in my Evanston neighborhood. Coleen and I spoke about how Story as a Service helps to create strategic alignment and communications strategies, especially for university research organizations, and we hatched a plan for partnership.
My colleague James and I went to Princeton together later that year for our Origin Engagement. For those of you who have never been to Princeton, the university is like what other universities dream about being when they go to sleep at night. It is beautiful. Pristine. What you’d imagine. But what was great is that the Office of Innovation felt scrappy, like a startup. Which was perfect given that their constitution was entirely to support a novel spirit and culture of entrepreneurship throughout the university.
We conducted our Origin Engagement Clarify session with their leadership team – Craig, Coleen, Daniel Day (Comms), Christin Galib (Innovation), as well as Steven Schultz, head of communications for the engineering school, a key partner. A great group. We claimed to them going in that the session would be fun as well as productive and useful. Actually, James did that and it made me nervous. We then spent a couple hours with them clarifying their core story – what they do, why it matters, why it’s distinctive or unique – and we really got the group to align around key identifiers they agreed formed their essential identity: research translation, positive impact, and cultivating an inclusive innovation ecosystem. At the end of the session, Craig said, with delight and, more than that, some surprise, “You guys promised this would be fun, and it really was!” Best compliment and testimonial we’ve ever gotten.
Fortunately, our work with Princeton didn’t stop there. With the terrific partnership of Daniel (best email handle ever: d-day@), we began to follow up on the ambition Craig had to imbue Princeton with that spirit of innovation. One of the really interesting points that arose during our session was that in certain ways, Princeton is risk-averse, perfectionist – which, critically, are qualities in opposition to that of entrepreneurship, which often, typically involves failure. Moreover, Craig really wanted to make sure to bring all of Princeton into the mix, not just the usual scientists and engineers interested in tech transfer. How could we accomplish, or at least initiate, some of this cultural change?
We determined that the best path forward was to marry our evolving innovation vocabulary with a strong, original visual element – a new visual identity for this new organization. With our phenomenal creative design partner Marco Kindler von Knobloch of multipleStudio in Madrid, we created an entire visual language for them, incorporating symbols that functioned as vowels. We recommended novel uses for the Princeton chevron and color schemes, fully (as always) working within the brand guidelines of the university. We iterated with the partner because that’s totally how we work. And we came up with a new language (verbal and visual) that communicates innovation in its very formal structure, inviting those engaging with the office to join in the act of “translation,” to use their imagination. We even developed an entirely new font, Princeton Innova, that they can download and use on their own.
Our work at Princeton has finished for the moment. The budget pressures from the feds – indirect cost cuts (or their threat), delays on grants, the looming endowment tax – all these things have made Princeton and so many of their peers (and my partners) more reluctant to spend on things like a core story or visual language. But we loved working with them and really, really loved what we made with them. And are delighted to see our innovations still used in their Office of Innovation outreach and communications.