Northwestern University

In the face of looming challenges like childhood obesity, environmental collapse, and soaring health care costs, we need dramatic and sustained innovation. Liz studies and designs organizations and technology to support collective innovation. Collective innovation is a process that harnesses the diverse and untapped human, social, and economic capital from distributed networks to discover, evaluate, and implement new ideas. Open, ubiquitous, sociotechnical systems support collective innovation affording greater speed and deeper and broader participation than was imaginable even a decade ago. She has extensively studied the unique challenges and opportunities for crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, online communities, brainstorming, and prototyping and provide a strong foundation for designing engaging social environments that promote innovation, learning, and leadership. As an Associate Professor of Design at Northwestern University, Faculty Founder of Design for America, and Co-Founder of the Delta Lab, she writes about human computer interaction, design, and innovation in academia. She is also a Northwestern Public Voices Fellowship Alum.EducationPhD, Management Science & Engineering, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CAMS, Product Design, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CABA, Art and Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NHResearch InterestsDesign and innovation; human-computer interaction; crowdsourcing; motivation