UNLEASHING Innovation

Nestled along a busy street in downtown Richmond, Virginia, amongst coffee shops, boutique hotels and restaurants sits an unexpected retail experience – the Shift Retail Lab – a place where Virginia Commonwealth University student entrepreneurs get to test their ideas in real time – in the real world.

“Shift Retail Lab is the first of its kind in its approach with retail and student entrepreneurship, providing a space where VCU student entrepreneurs can test their ideas through sales and customer feedback,” said Garret Westlake, VCUʼs associate vice provost for innovation and executive director of VCUʼs da Vinci Center for Innovation. “Itʼs an experimental playground.”

The 2,700-square-foot retail lab opened its doors in fall 2021. In 2022, Fast Company included it in its annual list of World Changing Ideas, which recognizes ingenuity and innovation in social good.

Entrepreneurial literacy

The Shift Retail Lab is the first student retail lab in the country and part of VCUʼs da Vinci Center for Innovation, which also launched the countryʼs first masterʼs degree program in product innovation in 2012. “We pair innovative programs with innovative facilities,” Westlake said. “It provides our students with this great intersection of really experiential learning opportunities.”

And while the da Vinci Center is a hub for ideation, breakthroughs happen across the university. From a world-class health system, VCU Health, to a top-ranked School of the Arts, VCU is unrelenting in its pursuit of challenging the status quo.

As a result, U.S. News & World Report recently ranked VCU as one of the top 30 most innovative public universities in the U.S., and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities designated VCU as an “Innovation & Economic Prosperity” university, recognizing VCUʼs economic and social impact through innovation and entrepreneurship, technology transfer, talent and workforce development, and community development.

VCU continues to infuse innovation across the university by bringing new opportunities to gain literacy in entrepreneurship and innovation to VCUʼs 240+ programs throughout the general curriculum. Along with computational and cultural literacy, the addition of entrepreneurship literacy to VCUʼs curriculum will better prepare VCU graduates for the workplace and to achieve career goals.

In December, the National Science Foundation ranked VCU among the top 50 public universities for research expenditures. For fiscal year 2022, VCU reached an institutional record of $405 million in sponsored research, marking a nearly 50% increase over the past five years and translating into a growing IP pipeline that will support tech transfer for years to come.

Innovation for all

As an urban research university and award-winning champion of diversity, VCU recently received a grant from Truist Financial Corp. to open its innovation and entrepreneurship program to community members from underrepresented groups. “Now through this grant, underrepresented entrepreneurs from Richmond are able to go through our four-week boot camp, earn a digital badge and more,” said Westlake.

In 2020, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and Coalition of Urban Serving Universities awarded VCU a grant to develop a new model of delivering 21st century innovation and entrepreneurship skills. The VCU Entrepreneurship Academy brought together 150 first-generation and low-income students alongside 50 community members identified by community partners to develop learning modules in topics such as design thinking, digital literacy and the art of the pitch.

Recognized as a Minority Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education, VCU is distinctly positioned to focus on success for all students. And with almost a third of entering full-time freshmen being PELL grant eligible, VCU has the unique ability to bring together concepts and ideas from a variety of perspectives.

“At VCU, weʼre uncommon,” Westlake said. “Weʼre breaking down barriers that too often stand in the way of great ideas and making innovation accessible to all.”

VCU is the only U.S. urban university to be awarded a Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award, named an R1 university with high research activity and community engagement by the Carnegie Foundation, ranked by U.S. News & World Report as a top 30 public "Most Innovative" university and ranked by the National Science Foundation as a top 50 public research institution.

This content was paid for and created by Virginia Commonwealth University. The editorial staff of The Chronicle had no role in its preparation. Find out more about paid content.