Had lunch with
Dr. Kristinn R. Thórisson, and learnt a lot about the
Icelandic Institute for Intelligent Machines (IIIM), fascinating stuff. The institutes mission is to accelerate adoption of
academic work into the industry as it relates to
Artificial Intelligence (A),
Machine Learning (ML) etc. The institute is currently funded by Rannis,
Reykjavik University and
CCP Games. The institute is trying to enable a closer link between
innovation and industry. The way it works is that if you are a sponsor of the institute you could technically "outsource" your
R&D project to the institute, which in turn will assemble the required resources i.e team and run the project. This is quite interesting because it enables better management of R&D budget for companies and also makes for the institute to work on tangible real world problems that need solution. I think the biggest challenge facing this institute is that there are no large innovation companies in
Iceland that can support or partner with this effort. I can see many startups that can participate in this effort but then again the startups are running on fumes anyways so they may not be able to sponsor or support the institute. We have a catch 22 situation here but I am confident there are very smart people and they will figure out a way to make this work. As a concept I think it is great, adds a lot of value and can facilitate innovation and make innovation sustainable. I want to push the envelop in looking at this institue and see if the Lean Principles can be applied in the modus operandi of the institute. I think similar institues have been successful in
MIT, Stanford,
UC Berkley and the like. I think the most prominent one is the Media Lab at MIT. Given the Dr. Kristinn used to be part of the
MIT Media Lab, it is a good thing. We need to bring those big companies or capital to foster the relationship between Universities and Commercial Enterprises. This makes the partnership sustainable.
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