Digital Design Blog

MIT and BofA to create “Innovation Engine”

Bank of America, in partnership with MIT Media Lab, has announced it will fund up to $15 million for the creation of the Center for Future Banking. Among the many areas to be researched are social media, virtual worlds and mobile computing and how customer experiences will be transformed by these technologies on a global scale. These areas will be explored through the invention of new application prototypes that seek to reinvent the way customers interact with financial services firms.

The collaboration “represents a new model by which academia and business will partner to invent the future of entire industries”, according to Frank Moss, the Director of the Media Lab.

The end goal? To “discover the principles that will transform banking in the next decade”. It also will be interesting to see how quickly this new model for “creative, multidisciplinary” research and development is adopted by other financial services firms and other verticals. Via Putting People First