Verizon Innovation Center, Where Innovation Happens

Verizon’s newly-expanded and renovated Innovation Center West opened its doors today. Tony Melone, Verizon’s chief technology officer, spoke about how the Innovation Centers are transforming the company, fostering innovation, and creating the kinds of solutions that help solve customers’ business problems.

Three Innovation Program participant companies shared their stories of working with Verizon to create solutions and quickly develop products: Intwine Connect, a maker of a connected home solution and air quality monitor based in Chagrin Falls, Ohio; Vital Connect, which has developed a personal health monitor and is based in Campbell, Calif.; and Wi-MM (Wireless Machine to Machine), which creates embedded wireless devices for the cycling community and is based in Santa Clara, Calif. 

In addition to creating a lab setting where engineers work side-by-side on connected solutions, Verizon’s Innovation Centers have hosted countless customers and innovators. The newly renovated space in California has doubled in size since its original launch and added more lab space and network equipment, including RF-shielded rooms that allow collaborators to test their solutions on Verizon’s development network to simulate real-world scenarios.   

Verizon first opened its two Innovation Centers, one outside Boston and one in San Francisco, during the summer of 2011. Since then, hundreds of collaborators have sampled what Verizon has to offer. With more than 300 participants, Verizon’s Innovation Program continues its focus on developing solutions and quickly bringing them to market. Nearly 50 products, ranging from consumer-focused solutions like the 4G LTE Router by Netgear to enterprise-ready solutions like the Big Belly Solar trash cans, which are deployed in cities across the country, have come through the Verizon Innovation Centers.