Are you a hammer or a nail? Insights from Princeton’s Keller Center Innovation Day

Princeton is discovering its entrepreneurial mojo, and part of that is integrating the traditional concerns of entrepreneurs — can we make something new that someone will buy — with the concerns of the humanities.

The Keller Center Annual Innovation Forum

Under the direction of Nena Golubovic, Princeton is beginning to embrace the idea that the discoveries in not only its research labs but in its humanities classes could truly have an impact on the world. In this second Innovation Day, over 280 guests heard from inspiring panel speakers, keynotes and — the focal point of the day — from teams of student and faculty entrepreneurs who compete for recognition in a (very polite) version of Princeton’s own “Shark Tank.”

Opening panel: A researcher, a VC and an entrepreneur walk into a room…

The opening panel of the conference was moderated by Golubovic and featured Manish Bhardwaj, the director of Keller’s program in social sciences, Jessie Treu, a founder of the venture capital firm Domain Associates and Chris Kuenne, a founder of the wildly successful company Rosetta and now a member of the faculty at Princeton and CEO of Rosemark, a world-class marketing…