CREATE LAB: Non-Partisan and Open Source

Last class’s visit to Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment Lab on CMU’s campus provided a unique perspective on social ventures, and gave us further insight into yet another type of business model by which social ventures can operate. The CREATE Lab, though in “partnership” with Carnegie Mellon University, operates under a strict non-partisan model and treats all of its projects as available to everyone and anyone.

            One of the most curious things about how CREATE Lab operates is the rather unconventional (in relation to the services they provide) nature of its funding; it is based on a “trust” system, whereby clients pay what they deem appropriate, and donations or gifts. Though this may give CREATE Lab more creative license, and the ability to fully focus on the “education” and “empowerment” aspect of their mission, it is difficult to understand just how they keep themselves afloat. The partnership with CMU is most likely a key component to their sustainability as an organization.

As careful as CREATE Lab may be about what sort of financial “gifts” they receive, it does bring up the question as to the power of influence these sponsoring institutions may have, and how this might affect the research and creative process at the Lab. In their “white paper”¹, CREATE Lab very deliberately points out that researchers at universities often only “conduct tests and leave with enough experience and evidence to document the results in academic publications”, as opposed to developing “sustained relationships” with the local communities they are involved with. CREATE Lab very openly strives for the latter, and has used its localized efforts to their benefit by having their products and services be unprotected and unhampered by intellectual property and licensing bylaws. This has allowed for the Lab’s ideas to spread and commercialize beyond what resources are accessible to them, locally or otherwise.

Some questions still lingering in my head:

How do they sustain their operations, financially? Do they just have that many clients? If so, what kind of marketing/networking have they done for that? Could they not benefit more from a “tiered fee” system?

I would imagine that partnering with CMU (and being on the same site) might homogenize both internal talent and the scope of projects they might tackle. Might the association with CMU lead their project direction and whom they partner with?

Is the power of influence by donors/givers less of an issue in product or service direction and research than we commonly assume?

¹ http://www.cmucreatelab.org/files/create_lab_white_paper.pdf