The U.S. has long held sway as the world’s innovation leaders. But, given the rapidly changing nature of the world and emergence of the global economy, they are in danger of losing the competitive edge they’ve had.

Significantly, this new economy is being fueled by exciting scientific developments arising out of basic research in nanotechnology and sensors, physical sciences, information technology, and bio-related technology. And these disciplinary areas are creating a spiral vortex, interpenetrating and changing each other as they themselves change. This is where the opportunity to stay competitive lies.

Giving the changing climate of competitiveness, the Z&L Creative and the partners have leveraged its multidisciplinary research and technical capabilities to create a innovative teams which have the ability to drive innovation.

But to drive innovation, you must be innovative: Z&L Creative Inc. represents a new mechanism to address research issues by bringing together multidisciplinary teams of the best minds (both in and beyond Z&L Creative Inc.) in a way that had been impossible earlier.

Z&L is taking ideas beyond theory into practice, accelerating innovation and shortening the time to product development and job creation. Where the university traditionally has focused on education and research, Z&L Creative Inc. extends that focus to include development and deployment of prototype infrastructure for testing new solutions in a real-world context.

Z&L Creative represents an experiment in inventing the university and industry research environment of the future to continue to fuel innovation in the global economy. It:

　　· Builds horizontal links among engineers and scientists from different fields to foster multidisciplinary research.
　　· Creates research teams consisting of members who can be located anywhere because of the Internet.
　　· Enables prototyping in Z&L Creative "living laboratories."
        · Provides technical professionals as the bridge between academia and industry.