Students have the answer to your innovation challenges

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There is something about back-to-school season at a university that feels alive. Thousands of students spill all over campus with oodles of energy, a new pair of shoes, and a lot of ambition. They want to learn. They want to help. They want to make a difference.

All that energy pours into an institution that has spent decades cultivating teaching practices to pass on knowledge and research methods to generate it. Graduates then carry those critical skills into industry, where they gain experience and can transform that knowledge into products and services.

Innovation has long thrived on this structured training, but today’s ecosystem is behaving differently. The development and use of AI tools have reshaped the innovative relationship between academia and industry, and undergraduates are caught in the middle.

AI reliance on campus has raised questions about whether students are developing the critical thinking skills they need. And once they graduate, they face cuts to entry-level jobs, greater unemployment rates than previous cohorts, and pressure to pivot quickly. Some are turning to AI-proof skills. Others have dedicated themselves to becoming the first AI experts.

As firms and universities navigate this ecosystem shift, Shoeb Hosain (Director of the McGill DataSphere Lab) sees an opportunity to benefit both students and industry.

Students are steeped in the latest technologies. And, under the guidance of their professors, are trained to use them ethically and effectively. For industry, this is an opportunity to engage students’ diverse experiences and solve their innovation challenges before the students even graduate. This gives students hands-on experience working on real tech challenges as industry benefits from students’ expertise and fresh ideas.

“That’s an interesting value proposition for organizations,” said Hosain in a recent interview on the McGill Delve podcast. “You just get those different perspectives.”

Hosain is trying out this approach through the DataSphere Lab. And so far, he thinks the project is working.

Early industry experience

The DataSphere Lab connects students with industry partners, giving them essential experience while creating tangible outputs.  Hosain works closely with the students. He sees the lab as a place for talent development within structured, real-world experience.

“We’ve got incredible talent at the university level. Incredible energy,” he said.

Many courses at the University have developed a hands-on component, but there are still limitations on what can be done inside the classroom within assignments and lectures, said Hosain.

“The lab just takes this one step further,” he said.

The McGill DataSphere Lab provides students the opportunity to work on a fully funded project brought to the lab from an industry client. Since the lab launched in 2023, it has compiled a library of 15 projects, including work in retail, fintech, and aerospace. Partnership with the lab isn’t limited to any one department either. Lab students have also supported internal teams in marketing and finance.

Hosain wants students to participate in more than just the technical aspects of the project. He helps students to build collaboration and consulting skills through direct work with the organization. This is a chance for students to navigate industry priorities and constraints by evaluating project impacts against technical feasibility.

“We’ll define the value drivers,” he said. “We’re also going to define the value proposition.”

A playground for new tools and tech

Dozens of tools and new AI tech are available to industry right now, and the challenge for any organization is in deciding which to use for a particular use case. So, for industry partners, a place like the McGill Datasphere Lab is an opportunity to work with students who are steeped in the latest technologies, and to use the university as an R&D lab for bespoke tech solutions.

This yields a few advantages for industry partners. In this case, the DataSphere Lab’s position within the university allows companies to draw on a unique talent pool.

“One thing that’s really important is the different perspectives,” said Hosain.

Research has well documented how welcoming people from all backgrounds is an excellent way to increase creativity, lead to better problem-solving, and prevent groupthink from undermining innovation. By pulling students from a wide range of disciplines across campus, the DataSphere Lab can create dynamic teams for their projects, said Hosain.

This also has the positive effect of enhancing students’ learning. Students and industry partners alike can learn from the diverse identities and experiences of their collaborators.

Plus, each semester, the lab welcomes new students with new perspectives, strengthening this effect. Student turnover at the lab is high in contrast to traditional organizations, where employees might stay for years. But this is far from a disadvantage, said Hosain. The continual newness, as he puts it, can be invigorating.

“Energy comes with some of that newness as well,” he said, “that just often doesn’t exist at organizations.”

Hosain designed the lab around this energy. The DataSphere Lab created intensive knowledge transfer and keen hiring protocols to account for students’ transience.

“We know that students will come and go,” he said. “We’ve built that into our model.”

Today’s students are developing right alongside these new technologies, he said. This makes for a unique moment in workplace operations and hierarchy. An organization’s senior advisor may have the same command of a new AI tool as a university student. Simply put, no one is an AI expert yet.

The students in the lab excel at testing things out, said Hosain. The lab is largely tool-agnostic. Its motivation isn’t to develop or promote a specific algorithm so much as experiment and play with the full spectrum of them.

“It’s an amazing playground right now,” said Hosain.

What does your organization’s technology stack look like? Which foundational language model could be a good fit? It’s questions like these that the lab can help with, he said.

Working with the DSL affords students first-hand experience applying emerging technologies to industry problems, preparing them to become the field’s future experts.

“Industry can really explore that new talent pool,” said Hosain.