As you view the YouTube video tour of the new Lion Launch Pad, understand that everything about it was designed and chosen very carefully. We searched for over six months to find the right location, equidistant from Schreyers, Smeal, IST and Engineering for easy access by students and their advising faculty. We found this space across College Avenue from the HUB. Being downtown, on College Avenue, also provides visibilty (we hang out a banner during football weekends) and encourages burning the midnight oil, the necessary fuel of entrepreneurs. No one likes working late in an empty building in a dark business park.

The space was originally divided up into individual offices and rooms. We blew all that out creating one large room and furnished it with open modular cubicles. The only doors are on the conference rooms and the bathrooms. Again by design. In Silicon Valley it is famously noted that Andy Grove, chairman of Intel, and Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, both work out of cubicles. The open design encourages free communication and collaboration. Opening up the space also afforded rich and expansive views of downtown and campus to all the occupants. This provides abundant natural light during the day and important views of activity at night, relieving the sense of isolation. We took our cues from both a Harvard Business School article, Why Office Design Matters and an essay, Bionic Office, by Joel Spolsky. A new innovation room is in the works based on this article by IDEO’s David Kelley.

Sense of community is important as well and all work is not done in a cubicle in an office. The Pad’s building has a large outdoor patio area and green space all around. Lots of low walls and wide steps to sit on when the weather is nice. We provide free wi-fi access in these areas. The smell of the Cheese Shop roasting coffee across Calder Way greets Launch Pad’ers each morning.