Zimbalist’s staff of 12 includes experts in rapid prototyping, specialists in areas like mobile or cloud computing and data miners who probe Web site data for insight into what visitors do. They work within a common framework based on idea generation, development, and diffusion throughout the business. Recent projects included prototypes for new display ad concepts as well as BlackBerry applications for Boston.com and the expert site About.com. The team’s work is intended to supplement and support innovation taking place within the business units. For example, the team is Prototyping E-Ink, an emerging display technology; some business units can’t spare the resources to investigate it.