Krisztina Holly is vice provost and executive director of the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation, where she works with academic units across USC to identify promising innovations and innovators, helping faculty and students make societal impact with their ideas. Reporting directly to the provost, Holly oversees a highly-qualified and growing staff with expertise spanning the business, marketing, financial, and legal implications of intellectual property management, technology licensing, and new venture creation.
The USC Stevens Institute for Innovation is a university-wide resource in the Office of the Provost designed to harness and advance the creative thinking and breakthrough research at USC for societal impact. USC Stevens identifies nurtures, protects, and transfers the most exciting innovations from USC to the market, and in turn, provides a central connection for industry seeking cutting-edge innovations in which to invest. Furthermore, USC Stevens develops the innovator as well as innovations, through educational programs, community-building events, and showcase opportunities. From the biosciences and technology to music and cinematic arts, USC Stevens connects faculty, students, and the business community to create an environment for stimulating and inspiring the process of innovation across all disciplines. This is the first time a major research university has taken such a unique approach to innovation.
Holly previously served as the founding executive director of MIT's Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, a highly successful and visible program that has supported MIT faculty and students engaged in scientific and technological innovation through grants, symposia, mentoring, and other means. In the first three years, the Center provided $5M in grants, engaged over 250 faculty and students and more than 100 investors and entrepreneurs, and spawned nine startup companies that raised $40M in capital from top-tier venture capital firms.
Holly earned her master's and bachelor's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, with a focus on optics and product design. Her career as an innovator began during her undergraduate years, when she worked on a team that developed the world's first computer-generated, full-color reflection hologram at the MIT Media Lab. Soon afterwards, she designed a robotic weld-seam-tracking program for the NASA space shuttle's main engine and co-designed and built a head-eye robot used for vision research. In 1991, she and two teammates invented and patented "The Stylus," a pre-Web electronic shopping tool, and wrote a business plan for it that won MIT's campus-wide entrepreneurial competition. The resulting company, Stylus Innovation, created a new development tool called Visual Voice that revolutionized the computer telephony industry. Stylus was acquired in 1996 by Artisoft, Inc.
After two and a half years in science documentary production, Holly joined start-up search engine Direct Hit Technologies as part of the small marketing team that, after four months, helped the site reach one million website hits per day. Ask Jeeves purchased Direct Hit in 2000 for $500 million. Holly stayed on with Ask Jeeves and coordinated a company-wide initiative to convert its services model into an enterprise software product, resulting in a new division called Jeeves Solutions.
Holly has been active in other non-profit roles as well, including serving as a board member for Entretech, judge in the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition, an advisory board member of Springboard New England, a member of the committee of visitors for the National Science Foundation's Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program, a board member of the MIT Enterprise Forum, Inc., president of the New England Mountain Bike Association, and a board member of the International Bicycling Association.
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