Faust, Boston Leaders Announce Plans for Innovation Week

Boston leaders from Harvard, The Boston Globe, Massachusetts General Hospital, and MIT announced plans to host a celebration of innovation in medicine, art, and technology in Boston called HUBweek at a press conference Friday.

The weeklong festival, scheduled for next October, will include hackathons, conferences, art exhibits, cultural performances, and other activities. Events will be held around Boston and Cambridge, including some on Harvard’s campus.

“HUBweek will give a stage and a voice to those innovators and to the paths they are forging towards new solutions,” University President Drew G. Faust said at the press conference. “Harvard is very proud to be a part of it.”

The festival organizers plan to bring together a diversity of professionals and thinkers to develop creative “solutions to global and local issues,” according to a press release.

“[It’s] something that would celebrate and showcase this extraordinary region with its vast scientific, technologic, intellectual, economic, and cultural strengths,” MGH President Peter L. Slavin said at the press conference. “It [won’t] be an event or a conference...but a gathering of curious people who would think big, be bold, and relish the opportunity to solve major problems.”

Slavin added that he hoped HUBweek will bring together the best minds in medicine to address issues in medical research and health care, including cancer, HIV, and diabetes.

One of the featured events of the festival is a series of "master classes" in which planners hope to turn Fenway Park into a 37,000-seat classroom where distinguished speakers will lecture on topics from research to philanthropy.

Boston’s HUBweek follows a trend of popular festivals showcasing regional innovation that have been celebrated across the nation, such as the South by Southwest festival in Austin and the Aspen Ideas Festival. Organizers hope this festival will draw the same attention for Boston as a creative hub.

“We believe that the future is being built right here in Boston,” Globe Managing Director Linda Pizzuti Henry said at the press conference. “We think that the unique confluence of art, technology, and science that is the hallmark of this region makes it the ideal setting to inspire and bring together leaders, disruptors, rebels, thinkers, and change agents locally and from around the world.”

—Staff writer Mariel A. Klein can be reached at mariel.klein@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @mariel_klein.