Newswise — Babson College has announced the appointment of Janos Stone as Manager of Innovation and Design Spaces for its new Weissman Foundry.
The Weissman Foundry is a cutting-edge studio dedicated to fostering creative and collaborative projects led by a community of Babson, Olin, and Wellesley college students. The intentional mashup of student disciplines and interests ignites forward-thinking idea exploration, iteration, and design, and facilitates meaningful knowledge transfer between its members.
“We are excited to welcome Janos Stone and his breadth of expertise in emerging technologies, disruptive innovations, and creative, entrepreneurial thinking to Babson,” said Candida Brush, Vice Provost of Global Entrepreneurial Leadership at Babson College. “We look forward to his role in fostering collaboration within this space, and the lasting impact that is sure to be created well beyond the walls of the Weissman Foundry.”
"The Weissman Foundry community is forming as I had hoped and expected, bringing together the widest array of disciplines and interests, and forging incredible creativity and shared exploration," said Stone. "I am happy to be convening such a diverse group of entrepreneurs, artists, engineers, and academics alike, and I am very eager to see what we create."
The Weissman Foundry was named in honor of devoted Babson alumnus and trustee Robert Weissman ’64, H’94, P’87 ’90 and his wife, Janet Weissman P’87 ’90.
Janos Stone
Janos Stone is known for turning ideas into technologies that enable creativity and generate value. He is an artist, designer, and serial entrepreneur. At the center of Stone’s creative discipline is his ability to observe patterns in systems, artifacts, or concepts. Once patterns are uncovered, he finds where the patterns overlap in order to hybridize ideas and generate solutions. Specifically, Stone uses postmodern art thinking to find unusual yet harmonious solutions by merging disparate patterns. These uncommon and often nascent solutions are important as they discover new value and disrupt old methodologies.
In his first venture, Mecube, Stone created the first 3D design to 3D printing mobile app. More recently, he was co-founder and chief of product for Kwambio. In its second round of fundraising, Kwambio raised $1.2M and began partnerships with established and emerging designers to produce a highly curated collection of customizable homewares, accessories, and art, manufactured on demand.
Currently, Stone is working on a privacy shelter for refugees. His design uses thick origami principles, is flat packable, requires no adhesives or fasteners, can be assembled by robot, and costs around $9.
As an educator, Stone takes an experiential and transdisciplinary approach to teaching. His focus is to increase a student’s inherent creativity through a combination of metacognition tools, mindfulness, and embracing prior knowledge and a comfort in failure.
Stone earned his BFA in sculpture and design from the Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA in sculpture from Boston University. His work and support media can be found at janosstone.com.
About Babson College
Babson College is the educator, convener, and thought leader for Entrepreneurship of All Kinds®. The top-ranked college for entrepreneurship education, Babson is a dynamic living and learning laboratory where students, faculty, and staff work together to address the real-world problems of business and society. We prepare the entrepreneurial leaders our world needs most: those with strong functional knowledge and the skills and vision to navigate change, accommodate ambiguity, surmount complexity, and motivate teams in a common purpose to make a difference in the world, and have an impact on organizations of all sizes and types. As we have for nearly a half-century, Babson continues to advance Entrepreneurial Thought & Action® as the most positive force on the planet for generating sustainable economic and social value.
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