Amma Johnson, director of the Penn State Harrisburg Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, who also oversees the Harrisburg LaunchBox, said, "We know that intrapreneurship is growing, and we thought a design thinking program would be a perfect framework for companies to problem solve.”
In the inaugural cohort this past spring, there were 15 participants representing four agencies: The Department of Agriculture, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Labor and Industry, and the Office of Transformation and Opportunity.
The next cohort of the permit accelerator program will run this fall from Sept. 4 through Nov. 7. The cohort will meet weekly over 10 weeks and then will have a Demo Day with department leaders at the end of the program.
One participant, Anton Urban, a program analyst in the Office of Unemployment Compensation Tax Services in the Department of Labor and Industry, used the program to address a long-standing bottleneck.