The Zeppos Report #2 with David Owens

Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos' second podcast guest is David Owens, a leading thinker on innovation and creativity who is a professor at the Owen Graduate School of Management. He also has faculty appointments in Engineering and Medicine. Among the many companies he has consulted for include NASA, The Smithsonian, Nissan LEAF, Gibson Music and many more. Owens talks about what it was like as the first faculty member to teach a class, 'New Product Design and Development,' in the maker space of the Wond'ry, Vanderbilt's new innovation center. He also discusses ideas that have come out of another unusual class he teaches, 'New Product Realization,' that pairs engineering students with business or law students. The Stanford University-educated Owens, who arrived on campus in 1998, has witnessed a tremendous surge in interest on campus, and higher education in general, with entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly given the tremendous success of companies such as Facebook and Google. He shares lessons learned for those students who take classes and participate in activities geared toward innovation, like the recent hackathons. For a transcript of this podcast, please go to this URL: https://s3.amazonaws.com/vu-wp0/wp-content/uploads/sites/79/2017/10/24191138/Zeppos_Report_2_DOwens.docx The podcast is available on SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube and The Zeppos Report website.