Letter to the community regarding the creation of an MIT Innovation Initiative

To the members of the MIT community, I lauded MIT’s track record of success in focusing brilliant, interdisciplinary teams on extremely challenging problems in my inaugural remarks. This success can be traced back to the Energy Initiative, the Rad Lab, the Lincoln Lab, and our numerous partnerships with industry.

I asked my colleagues on the faculty to think of big problems and places where MIT could make a unique contribution in the future through coordinated, mission-driven research across the Institute and the power of innovation and entrepreneurship.

I have received numerous excellent ideas and suggestions throughout the year;Today, I’ll talk about two things that naturally go together.