NYC Media Lab Is More Matchmaker than Incubator

Posted on 01. Dec, 2010 by Amy Berryhill in Uncategorized

The NYC Media Lab is not off to a roaring start and, while the name mimics the very successful lab in Cambridge, it will not be like that place at all.

With one full-time employee and only $250,000 in funding from the city, the NYC Media Lab is still a fledgling organization. But their plans are big. They want to create collaboration between the city’s universities and businesses, turning innovation into profit.

“I think it shows a lot of foresight that our city is willing to invest in our innovation and technology future. What they clearly see are 300,000 jobs in the balance in the media sector,” said NYC Media Lab Executive Director Roger Neal.

While the famous media lab at MIT focuses heavily on research, the NYC Media Lab will function more as a shared resource for researchers and companies with related interests. It is a pan-university effort, with oversight from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University and Columbia University, and a desire to bring all of the city’s top research talent into the fold.

“We are blessed with many academic research institutions, but one doesn’t know where to go to make sure that, of the thousands of Ph.Ds in New York City, you talk to the right one to work on your problem,” said Shiv Panwar, the NYU-Poly representative for the lab.

Researchers also face problems. They need funding, and sometimes they have solutions but are not sure what problem they could solve, according to Mr. Panwar. He gave an example from his own work in wireless technology, where his research could assist mobile advertisers.

“There are companies looking for new technologies and the idea is to hook them both up,” he said.

So far the efforts of the lab have focused on naming an executive director and hosting a few roundtables. Mr. Neal was hired in October to run the group and he is currently creating a plan for how to turn the lab into a sustainable business. The initial investment is intended to support the organization until the end of 2011.

The roundtable will clearly play a role in the future of the lab – the official press release said there will be at least ten in the first year – but Mr. Panwar hopes that these will be action oriented roundtables with clear outcome expectations. He also envisions a database component to catalog the skills and expertise of each research institution, so that they can be matched with the needs of the industries.

Further plans have not been made public, and success will not be measured in the near term. The New York City Economic Development Corporation, one of the partners in the project, says that it is too early to create milestones or evaluate progress. That sentiment was echoed by Robert Lieber, the former Deputy Mayor for economic development, who said that small investments like the NYC Media Lab are not intended to work rapidly.

“These aren’t things that are going to make a difference in the next ten years,” he said. “These are things that are going to make a difference over decades.”