Coles College of Business is welcoming a new center of excellence, aimed at fostering innovation in business and beyond.

Executive director and associate professor of management and entrepreneurship Steve Olson will lead the Center of Innovation Excellence. Olson recently joined Kennesaw State University from Georgia State University, where he ran the Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility.

“This new center will be looking at innovation writ large,” said Olson. “We’ll start with business innovation and that will naturally transition to social innovation and even innovation in ethics.”

As Olson builds the center, his goal is to create the “Juilliard” of innovation, bringing master practitioners together with top student talent.  First on his list of initiative’s are:

• Create a multi-disciplinary course on innovation
• Build business partnerships
• Develop tools to support businesses and students as they innovate
• Find ways to expose non-business students to business courses through core curriculum offerings
• Attract more majors and minors from other areas

The center will focus not only on new business ideas, but also on ways to move existing businesses forward. Simply put, his goal is to help firms create and deliver value that they’re currently not creating.

“A business can’t sustain profitability without innovating well,” said Olson. “We have to ask, how do we create lasting value that is so unique that there’s nothing else to like it in terms of value?”

According to Olson, bringing students and academics from areas outside of business into the center is essential. He believes that by breaking the silos of departments and majors, the center can tap into the creativity found in other disciplines.  Other disciplines can benefit from applying business knowledge to their ideas.

“Innovation is as much an art as it is a science,” said Olson. “I want to take a very multi-disciplinary approach to the center in order to leverage the strengths that diverse disciplines and people can bring to the table.”

Along with spanning different subject areas, the center will also do more than develop products and business ideas. One main focus will be on the evolution of ethics to keep pace with business advances.