Two students standing in a room filled with tshirts. The woman on the left is holding a folded up tshirt and the man on the left is holding it unfolded
Shift Retail Lab is a multifunctional retail space where VCU student innovators and entrepreneurs can showcase their work to gain insights and test their products, services and ideas with real-world customers. (Kevin Morley, University Marketing)

May 3, 2022

VCU’s Shift Retail Lab recognized by Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards

Space operated by the VCU da Vinci Center for Innovation earns an honorable mention in the Urban Design category of the magazine’s 2022 World Changing Ideas Awards.

Share this story

By Brian McNeill

Fast Company has named Shift Retail Lab at Virginia Commonwealth University as an honorable mention in the Urban Design category of the magazine’s 2022 World Changing Ideas Awards.

Shift Retail Lab, which is operated by the VCU da Vinci Center for Innovation and is located at 1235 W. Broad St., is a multifunctional retail space where VCU student innovators and entrepreneurs can showcase their work to gain insights and test their products, services and ideas with real-world customers.

“Collaboration across disciplines and between the university and the community is the future of higher education. Thanks to invaluable community partners like Mark Hourigan and Hourigan Construction, VCU is able to fulfil its mission as an innovative urban research university,” said Garret Westlake, Ph.D., executive director of the da Vinci Center, a collaboration of VCU's Schools of Arts and Business, and Colleges of Engineering and Humanities and Sciences and VCU Health. “This award is a win for VCU and the Richmond region.”

Fast Company today announced the recipients of its World Changing Ideas Awards, which recognize ingenuity and innovation in social good, seeking to elevate finished products and brave concepts that make the world better.

“We are consistently inspired by the novelty and creativity that people are applying to solve some of our society’s most pressing problems, from shelter to the climate crisis. Fast Company relishes its role in amplifying important, innovative work to address big challenges,” David Lidsky, interim editor-in-chief of Fast Company, said in a news release. “Our journalists have identified some of the most ingenious initiatives to launch since the start of 2021, which we hope will both have a meaningful impact and lead others to join in being part of the solution.”