Case Study: UC San Diego achieves strategic alignment and campus-wide crowdsourced innovation with HYPE Innovation's IdeaWave

UC San Diego Advancing Strategic Priorities through Crowdsourcing

UC San Diego, a top‑15 research university, needed to turn its 2014 Strategic Plan into action across a large, siloed campus. With declining state funding and growing organizational complexity, leadership sought a scalable way to engage faculty, staff and students to surface practical ideas tied to the university’s five strategic goals.

The university launched IdeaWave—HYPE Enterprise managed by the Office of Operational Strategic Initiatives—mapping campaigns to strategic priorities, using sponsors, WaveRunners and a governance model to guide idea evaluation and execution. The program reached tens of thousands of campus members, produced high levels of engagement (campaigns with thousands of views, targeted drives with strong participation), delivered quick wins and larger projects (for example, an electronic performance‑appraisal system that replaced weeks of manual audit data gathering with a few clicks), supported external collaborations (NSF and industry partnerships), and established a sustainable platform for continuous, cross‑campus innovation.

UC San Diego

Bob Neuhard

Executive Director