The Benjamin Franklin Project at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, will host an interdisciplinary conference on innovation on April 10 – 11, 2014, in Hermann Hall on IIT’s Main Campus in Chicago.

The Atlantic Enlightenment of the 18th Century ushered in an era of unprecedented innovation and creativity, as well as new types of institutional infrastructures that fostered and informed these creative processes. We will consider this historical moment alongside today’s innovation landscape, exploring what it takes for innovation to flourish. We will also explore how institutional infrastructures inform creativity, its successes, and its failures.

Keynote speakers for the conference include Genevieve Bell, the Director of Interaction and Experience Research at Intel, Simona Maschi from the Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design, as well as Historian Adrian Johns, Sociologists Paul Starr (Princeton) and Fred Block (UC-Davis), and Political Scientists Laura Hosman (IIT) and John Zumbrunnen (UW-Madison). Additionally, the conference’s call for papers has attracted submissions from all over the United States and Europe.

Please note that the entire IIT community–students, faculty, staff, and alumni–are invited to attend all keynote events. For a full list of conference events and more details, visit the conference website.