Building a Multidisciplinary Team, Open Culture, and Workplace for Innovation to Thrive

A Collaborative Environment to Foster Breakthrough Technology & Science

Emulate, Inc. is a spin-out from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute, located in Boston’s highly competitive biotechnology and health industry. Their purpose is to democratize the breakthrough Organs-on-Chips technology, so that every researcher in every lab can have access to it, to understand and benefit human health.

To be able achieve their very ambitious business goals, Emulate needed to attract a highly skilled and hard-to-get multidisciplinary team consisting of great designers, engineers, scientists, doctors, manufacturers, and commercial people. To do that, we needed to create a vision, culture, and environment that would attract brilliant individuals to become ‘Emulators’ - people who believe in the mission of the organization and who will do what it takes for it to succeed.

“People come here for the opportunity to take what they’ve learned, and apply it to something that’s really going to have an impact. All of that experience coming together creates this wonderful environment for innovation - and an incredible energy.”

—Dr. Geraldine Hamilton, President & CSO of Emulate, Inc.

“We’ve been able to assemble a really talented team, who are passionate about what they are doing, and are excited about our vision.”

—James Coon, Frmr CEO of Emulate, Inc.

Traditionally design, engineering, and science functions are siloed. For this radical technology to be successful, it was critical to blend these disciplines into a single unified product design and development team, all working together in a unique space that promoted openness and integration between their varied skills sets.

As well as an integrated multidisciplinary workplace, creating an open culture where all these varied experts could work together was critical to success. Lewis worked to develop a place where people are excited to come to to work, encouraging a mindset where everyday there can be new ideas, methods, or techniques to solve a particular issue, with a seamless environment for brainstorming and building solutions together.

Emulate’s unique workplace is located in Boston’s thriving Innovation & Design Building alongside other innovative startups. Lewis led and worked alongside a number of partners including design firms, architects, organizational design consultants, and of course the Emulators themselves, to create this culture & workplace for success.