Internet Commerce Lab

Consultants at Deloitte & Touche and students at the UC Irvine Graduate School of Management have created a laboratory to find new ways to plug into the future of online profits.

Dubbed the Internet Electronic Commerce Lab, the site helps students, university faculty and Deloitte & Touche staff develop practical ways to use the Internet and online commerce to solve everyday business problems.

The accounting firm, which funds the venture, declined to say how much it is spending on the lab.

“The idea is to develop practical solutions with technology,” said Aaron Davies-Morris, senior consultant with Deloitte & Touche’s Enterprise Risk Services. “It’s also a pretty solid recruiting vehicle.”

Staff began installing hardware for the lab in late October. By early next year, faculty expect to begin working in the lab, which is in the university’s Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations.

Participants can tackle a variety of commerce problems, from different uses of “smart cards”--credit-card-size cards with a computer chip that stores and processes information--to how to sell products without human interaction.

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P.J. Huffstutter covers high technology for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com.