Ayham Boucher
Head of AI Innovation,
Cornell University
From 40 AI Solutions to Enterprise Scale: Evolving an AI Innovation Lab for Institutional Impact
Wednesday, September 30, 2026 | 10:45AM–11:30AM MT
Session Type:
Breakout Session
Delivery Format:
Presentation
In this session, attendees will learn how Cornell’s AI Innovation Lab transformed campus interest in AI into 40+ solutions across administrative, student, and academic use cases. Using student developers, agile delivery, and a defined intake and evaluation framework, Cornell built a high-velocity model for turning ideas into practical results. That success, however, created a new challenge familiar to many institutions: how to move from successful pilots and point solutions to a more durable, enterprise-ready approach to AI. As demand grew, builder capacity became constrained, and promising solutions required clearer governance, ownership, and support to scale. Presenters will share how Cornell evolved its model to balance innovation velocity with operational reliability, including how AI can augment existing work, be embedded within enterprise platforms, and fundamentally reshape processes. Attendees will leave with a practical blueprint for launching AI innovation and scaling it toward sustained institutional impact.
