University of Washington Fosters Innovation on the World Stage
In pursuit of the lofty goal of accelerating its innovation-to-impact cycle, the University of Washington invited Creative Destruction in, launching a Seattle site with Advanced Manufacturing and Computational Health streams aimed at disrupting production and revolutionizing diagnostic and therapeutic outcomes.
In 2019, the University of Washington assembled an Innovation Roundtable of some of the most prominent venture capitalists, angel investors, and innovation leaders in the Pacific Northwest. The aim was to find ways to expand the institute’s innovation ecosystem across the region with partnerships in both the public and private sectors, accelerating startup creation and the transfer of technology to market.
After examining five models, the roundtable selected Creative Destruction Lab (CDL). A nonprofit organization, CDL’s mission is to bridge the gap between market opportunities, capital, talent, and expertise in Silicon Valley and its 12 global sites, each connected to a leading educational institution.
With the launch of CDL-Seattle in May 2021, UW joined a global network that spans HEC Paris, the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business
School, Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, to name a few.
CDL-Seattle’s launch also helped UW attain one of the roundtable’s goals at inception, formalizing partnerships across campus and with the private sector. Notable founding partners include the College of Engineering, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, and CoMotion Labs, as well as Microsoft Corporation, Washington Research Foundation, Foster Foundation, and Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2).
Each fall, CDL admits a cohort of massively scalable, seed-stage, science-and technology-based ventures into 20 streams, including Seattle-based Computational Health and Advanced Manufacturing. Unlike its peers, CDL does not take equity or IP ownership in ventures. There are no fees to participate.
For participating startups, CDL presents an opportunity unlike any other due to the caliber of its mentors and the depth of their engagement. At the core of CDL’s nine-month mentorship program are five intensive, day-long objective-setting sessions. Venture founders and CEOs benefit from the guidance of world-leading scientists, engineers, economists, and seasoned, successful
entrepreneurs. They get to be in the room while thought leaders debate and come to a consensus on their venture’s next steps.
For the duration of the program, these world-class mentors act as a surrogate board of directors offering technical advice and expertise. To help ensure objectives are met, top EMBA and MBA students embed with their ventures to provide hands-on support. Participants are also provided networking opportunities with prominent angel investors and venture capitalists. The program targets massively scalable enterprises—with technology or science as a core competitive differentiator—led by ambitious founders and CEOs willing to move fast and take on risks and external capital.
CDL alumni are redefining success by pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, making strides in the advancement of AI, climate, health, quantum, and more. Take, for instance, Cellens, co-founded by CEO Jean Pham. An alum of CDL-Seattle’s 2021/22 Computational Health stream, the Boston-based startup is pioneering an AI-based cell imaging platform for bladder cancer diagnostics.
