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Home Depot recently partnered with Georgia Institute of Technology to open a center for developing and testing high-tech consumer products.
The university-based research and development center allows students to work for Home Depot to develop new ideas and create potential products, according to a press release from the university.
“I cannot tell you what a great opportunity this is for us to be working with some of the best young minds here at Georgia Tech,” Home Depot chief information officer Matt Carey says in the press release. “Georgia Tech provides us with a unique opportunity to get fresh, innovative ideas and forward, out-of-the-box thinking from students who will be shaping and developing our world of the future.”
The relationship with the home improvement retailer also allows Georgia Tech to develop innovation and entrepreneurship skills in students.
“This partnership is about co-innovation to create new opportunities and to solve problems, which in turn helps establish enhanced market competitiveness,” says Stephen E. Cross, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for research, in the press release.
Other retailers have also created laboratories to build relationships with technology innovators. For example, Lowe’s developed Lowe’s Innovation Labs for “building technology solutions that address common consumer problems in partnership with uncommon partners like tech start-ups, academics and other companies [with the goal] to be a leader in innovation for the retail industry, building technology solutions that address common consumer problems,” according to the lab’s website.
To read more about the Home Depot-Georgia Tech partnership, click here.
