Smart phones, social media sites, wi-fi tablets and ebooks. Back in 2000, when Hallmark became a corporate sponsor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, it was impossible to imagine technology’s impact on how we stay connected. But by 2010 the future of social expression was being invented every day, and Hallmark’s partnership with the Media Lab was helping it keep up with this breakneck pace of change.

The MIT Media Lab now comprises 135 researchers and graduate students from a variety of disciplines working side-by-side to invent and reinvent how people interact with technology. Randy Knipp, product innovation manager and Hallmark's liaison with the Media Lab, is quick to point out that the lab’s main value for Hallmark isn’t so much in creating the next “gadget” as it is in understanding how we connect emotionally.

“The lab is as much about the human condition as it is about technology,” he says. “For example, exploring the way kids think and play, the future of storytelling, understanding autism and emotional cues, and the ways we connect through both the physical and digital world that is important for the human psyche.”

Through the years, however, the Media Lab has inspired a variety of Hallmark products, including Cards With Sound and the Keepsake Kids line. Discussions with the Media Lab have also included what the next generation of Hallmark Recordable Storybooks and Interactive Storybooks and Story Buddies™ might be.

"Students in the lab don't tell us what to do, rather they inspire us to think differently about what we do," Knipp says.

“Members of the MIT Media Lab frequently come to us if they’re working on something they think might be beneficial to our business,” Knipp says. “An important tenet in our innovation process is to get outside thinking, which supports an open innovation strategy. And that's what we get from our sponsorship of the MIT Media Lab.”

 

NEXT: Community Involvement >