News
The Generator in motion.
Collaborating with
Oxford University’s AI in Education · Microsoft Research
As Featured in
The New York Times · The Chronicle of Higher Education · AACSB · WCVB Boston
Invited to
OpenAI’s Education Forums
2026
Oxford’s Dr. Sara Ratner Keynotes the Generator’s Faculty Forum on AI and the Future of Higher Education
Dr. Sara Ratner of Oxford University’s AI in Education hub (AIEOU) delivered the keynote at the Generator’s faculty forum, AI and the Future of Higher Education, at the Weissman Foundry. Babson faculty and academic leaders took part in a half-day of discussion on the philosophical, pedagogical, and strategic implications of AI for universities.
More Than 500 Students From 35 Universities Compete in the Generator’s Fourth AI Buildathon
Students from more than 35 institutions, including MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, HEC Paris, the University of Waterloo, and Kharkiv Polytechnic in Ukraine, spent 12 hours in Babson’s Knight Auditorium building AI innovations for The Generator’s ”AI, Body & Mind“ Buildathon. Across its four Buildathons, the Generator has drawn sponsorship from OpenAI, Anthropic, GitHub, Cursor, Lovable, ElevenLabs, WHOOP, and HubSpot, alongside co-host Microsoft Research.
The Generator’s AI Innovators Bootcamp Trains 135 Small-Business Owners; Every Participant Surveyed Would Recommend It
Co-delivered by Babson faculty and Generator students, the AI Innovators Bootcamp has now trained 135 small-business owners across four cohorts, 40% of them Babson alumni. Working in cohorts of 30 or more, owners get “hands-on-keys” practice with AI tools and study core concepts, competitive shifts, and AI’s complexities, ethics, and risks. The curriculum addresses a documented gap: 93% of small-business owners say they are not prepared for the AI age. Every surveyed participant would recommend the program to a fellow owner, ten students earned paid internships with participating companies, and what began as a pilot is now a credit-bearing experiential elective on the way to a stated goal of 1,000 owners trained.
– Bootcamp Participant, Cohort 4
Microsoft Research Hosts Generator Students to Test a Prototype AI Agent
Thirty Babson students tested a prototype AI agent for small businesses at Microsoft's Garage in Cambridge, working alongside seven business owners and presenting their findings to Microsoft Research. Microsoft called Babson "a natural partner" for grounding AI development in small business understanding.
In The Conversation: Girdharry on Teaching Students When to Struggle
Kristi Girdharry writes that teaching students to recognize when productive struggle matters is now part of a writing professor's job.
Edward Elgar to Publish a Generator-Edited Volume on AI in Entrepreneurship Education
Edward Elgar Publishing will publish AI in Entrepreneurship Education: Interdisciplinary Action on the Frontier, edited by Erik Noyes, Jonathan Sims, Kristi Girdharry, Davit Khachatryan, and Candida Brush. Twenty-two Babson faculty contributed eighteen teaching innovations to the volume.
2025
Davenport and Noyes Publish in Harvard Business Review on AI and Venture Capital
Generator Fellow Tom Davenport and Generator director Erik Noyes report that generative AI is changing what venture capitalists expect from founders: leaner teams, smaller funding asks, and a working business rather than a concept at the first pitch. What has not changed is the weight investors put on the founders themselves, their judgment, their command of the market, and how fast they learn.
Journal of Leadership Studies Publishes a Study of the Generator’s Leadership Model
Kristi Girdharry and Beth Wynstra’s peer-reviewed article examines the Generator as a case of distributed, faculty-led AI leadership and argues the model transfers to other institutions.
Stein’s AI Mortgage Study Wins Two Real Estate Society Prizes
Luke Stein’s study of racial bias in AI mortgage underwriting won the American Real Estate Society’s Real Estate Finance Manuscript Prize and Innovative Thinking Prize, and best paper at the New Zealand Finance Meeting. The Mortgage Note and Public Citizen covered its finding that instructing the models to decide without bias eliminates the approval gap.
The Chronicle and AACSB Profile the Generator's Faculty-Led Model
The Chronicle of Higher Education featured The Generator in its "Leading in the AI Era" report. Also, AACSB profiled the lab's faculty-led approach as a model for AI integration in business education.
The Generator Is Selected Twice for OpenAI's Education Forum
OpenAI selected the Generator twice for its invitation-only Education Forum, alongside institutions including Arizona State, Oxford, Cal State, and Harvard.
Generator Faculty Peer-Train More Than Half of Babson's Faculty in AI
Through the AI Teaching Training Program ("AITTP"), Generator faculty have trained more than 50% of Babson's faculty in AI concepts and tools for pedagogical innovation. Among faculty participants, confidence in cross-divisional AI conversations rose from 20% to 83%, confidence explaining AI's significance in higher education rose from 17% to 82%, and understanding of AI for experiential learning rose from 40% to 91%.
WCVB Reports From the Generator on How Students Use AI
ABC Boston's David Bienick reported from the Weissman Foundry on how Babson students use AI across their coursework.
Olin-Stanford Team Wins the Second Generator Buildathon With an AI-Powered Prosthetic
More than 200 students in 40 teams from a dozen universities, including MIT, Harvard, and Stanford, competed at the second Generator-Microsoft Buildathon. The winning entry, Terraflex, is a prosthetic foot attachment that adapts to uneven terrain, built in one day. A judge offered follow-on funding, and Olin College reported the win.
2024
Writing Faculty From 30 Institutions Convene at the Generator’s AI Symposium
Writing-program leaders from more than 30 institutions, including Harvard, MIT, Tufts, and Northeastern, met at Babson for the Generator’s symposium on AI, writing, and research. Babson students presented their own uses of AI, including a startup treating trichotillomania.
The Generator Presents to the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers
Generator Director Erik Noyes presented the lab’s model and Babson’s approach to AI to the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers, the international network of university entrepreneurship centers.
First Generator-Microsoft Buildathon Draws 200 Students; a Fact-Checking Tool Wins
More than 200 students from Babson, Olin, and Wellesley competed in the first Entrepreneurship & AI Buildathon, organized by the Generator Student Lab and co-sponsored with Microsoft Research New England. The winning team built Factuality, a Chrome extension for real-time fact-checking, and headed for the Chrome store within a month. Noyes called the event “proof of concept that there’s a huge appetite with students to mash up entrepreneurship and AI.”
Babson Announces the Generator; Release Carried by The Globe and Mail and Yahoo Finance
Babson College announced the Generator, its interdisciplinary AI lab, in a release syndicated to financial press including The Globe and Mail and Yahoo Finance. The release described the lab as a place where AI meets entrepreneurship and innovation, design, and the humanities.
Generator Faculty and Students Join Microsoft’s Global AI Hackathon
Faculty and students affiliated with the Generator took part in Microsoft’s Global AI Hackathon at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, an event involving more than 55,000 Microsoft employees and customers, on the theme of accelerating entrepreneurship and innovation with AI.
The New York Times Quotes Noyes on AI and Small Business
The New York Times quoted Generator director Erik Noyes in its reporting on how AI is changing the economics of startups and small businesses.
Generator Surveys Measure AI Use Among Babson Faculty and Students
The Generator's first surveys of campus AI use found 84% of faculty using AI regularly or experimentally and 96% of students using AI tools regularly; 87% of students use AI to save time and 62% report learning gains. The results guide the lab’s programming.
2023
The Generator Launches: Ten Faculty, Many Divisions, One Interdisciplinary AI Lab
Ten Babson faculty from entrepreneurship, operations, management, arts and humanities, math and science, and the Weissman Foundry founded the Generator to explore, teach, and research AI’s transformative potential.
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