In this first issue, we talk about the nuts and bolts of the idea shop at the Illinois Institute of Technology. We provide a virtual tour of the idea shop and answer some frequently-asked questions. We feature two additional articles entitled, “The Digital Library,” and “IPRO 2.0 Interprofessional by Design.” The first article discusses a novel way to provide targeted content to a large audience without taking up much physical space. The second article describes a new pilot course that undergraduates at IIT are taking this semester in the idea shop. The pilot course is the first leg of a two-semester sequence in which groups of students from different majors team up to work on important problems that come from all sorts of places (students, faculty, corporate sponsors, etc).