Priorities:North Dakota State University Student Priorities

Overview

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship ecosystem at North Dakota State University could best be described as being in an incubation state. A workable amount of resources are present, with a number of key resources, tools, and programs at various stages of planning and implementation that will allow the campus environment to flourish.

There are a number of positive aspects to the campus that students can make use of. NDSU maintains the following services that one would generally expect to find as ‘standard’ at a research/innovation university:

• Tech Transfer Office; formal Intellectual Property management
• Business Incubator; space, place, and people for startups to make their mark
• Student-industry collaboration as part of the standard educational experience (senior design, engineering)

These services work together to allow an innovation culture to exist on campus.

Upon deep analysis of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship ecosystem on NDSU’s campus using the landscape canvas, select gaps in the ecosystem were identified. While a number of concerns, big and small, were noted, two gaps in particular have been chosen as critical areas of work to be focused on.

[MORE TO COME]

Link to Prezi overview of campus ecosystem:

http://prezi.com/8xzmdf4l2mf-/the-journey/ (until I figure out how to embed it)

Calling all students

Informational Session (come hear plans, offer feedback and help expand opportunities for all students)

• Where: Presented to NDSU Bison Microventure research group
• When: 10-24-13
• RSVP: N/A
• Attendance: 8 students, 1 faculty

Second Informational Session (come hear plans, offer feedback and help expand opportunities for all students)

• Where: NDSU Student Union
• When: TBD
• RSVP: TBD, andrew.dalman@ndsu.edu

Third Informational Session (presentation to faculty and community innovation focus group)

• Where: TBD
• When: TBD
• RSVP: TBD, andrew.dalman@ndsu.edu

Strategy #1: Realization

The first area of focus, or ‘strategy,’ is based off of the Realized section of the landscape canvas. This section deals with the ability of students to commit to an opportunity, eg; licensing a technology, forming a venture, and/or attaining legal status. A review of this section reveals that while there exist a few spaces for venture startup/incubation and a TTO for protecting intellectual property, a stark lack of funding, grant, or investment assistance presents itself.

Following are an array of strategies that will fully address Gap #1 over a 2-3 year period:

Tactic #1: Acquire an innovation space

• Description:

Andy's research has shown that no small number of innovation cultures have started with a simple place for like minds to gather and discuss ideas in an informal setting- even something as simple as an old closet filled with whiteboards has done the trick! NDSU does not currently have anywhere that students can identify as such a space. Finding a random empty classroom is not an uncommon practice for students looking to work on a project, typically with a few group members, but this comes with its own complications... a class could come in and take the space, students aren't surrounded by any other fresh minds, and the work done in such a space is almost guaranteed to be gone in the morning.

Providing students with a place 'with a sign on the door' designating it as purely a space for students to meet and hang out with innovative and entreprenurial interests in mind will encourage and nourish the formation of ideas and student innovation teams/entrepreneurs, in no particular order. As rules can have a tendency to stifle innovation, the objective is to keep this space as free and open as possible, accessible to all majors and during as much of the day as is feasible.

• Team Leader:: Andrew Dalman - championoning the idea of a student innovation space & currently in discussion for a few potential locations. So exciting!

• Milestones:

1.  Scouting of open (or offered) spaces to determine size, condition, and work required to make it usable. Schedule: Early-Mid November 2013
2.  Creation of a shopping/salvage/'stealing'/donation list for required items such as whiteboards, tables, at least one pc, etc. Schedule: Mid-late November 2013. Prerequisite: Scouting
3.  Movement of first equipment into room. Putting a formal sign on the room to give it purpose! Schedule: Early December 2013, but heavily dependant on date we'll be able to move in. This part isn't too much up to us.  Prerequisite: acquisition of  required materials.
4. Hold first meeting! Campuswide announcement about grand opening of NDSU's first student innovation space. Bring in a few speakers, makerspace veterans, etc to get things started. Schedule: previous milestone completion + 1-2 weeks; Est mid Dec 2013-early Jan 2014.
5. Designate student leader to organize regular events promoting and encouraging I&E, to be held at this location. UI fellow may take a backstage role at this point, if desired. Schedule: mid Jan 2014-mid Feb 2014. Author note: this time flows quite nicely with the tail end NDSU's Innovation Challenge. The facility will ideally be up and running for the stressful last few weeks, and will additionally provide the only innovation events on campus during off-year of Innovation Challenge.

Tactic #2: Acquire resources

• Description: While a room with a whiteboard is enough to get us started, I'd like to expand upon that as much as possible. I'm considering this a seperate tactic as it involves going through different channels and asking for entirely different things from different people. The goal here is to network with as many higher-ups who support the movement as possible (many of whom have already been interviewed for the landscape canvas) and see what kind of extra equipment their department might be willing to lend. We're talking computers, arduinos, soldering irons, scrap metal, hot glue guns.... anything not 'required' to run the I-space but would still contribute to its usefulness. More importantly, anything not nailed down! People resources are going in this tactic as well. The I-space will require a semi-regular pool of mentors, be they faculty, community leaders, or just motivate volunteers. The purpose of this group will be to offer more everyday advice and counsel than bringing in a speaker or holding an event.
• Team Leader::  Andrew Dalman pending response from a few mentors who may be able to champion this instead; TBD. I'm leaving the TBD tacked on here as I'd like to delegate this one off as soon as possible but do not currently have an alternative champion.
• Milestones:

1. Perform an interest survey of what students would like to see or have access to. This will allow me/us to focus our resources on acquiring what we need....without cluttering up the space with tools that won't be used. Schedule: acquisition of space +1 week; Mid December 2013 but dependant on move-in date.
2. See what's there... and see what isn't there. What can we add to the space in order to bring in demographics of students we notice are lacking? Schedule: inauguration of I-space+1-4 weeks; Early January 2014.
3. Keep in contact with staff who operate labs, department chairs, etc... to keep well informed of any 'juicy' equipment or programs that are being underutilized. No schedule.
4. Recruit a pool of staff/volunteers/leaders/students willing to 'exist' in the space for a few hours every week, helping studentsas necessary. Schedule: inauguration of I-space -2 weeks or so to allow for recruitment. Early December 2013.

Tactic #3: Putting it all together

• Description: There does not currently exist any record of I&E resources on campus- when interviewing faculty and students for the Landscape Canvas, only occasionally did the same resource get mentioned twice. During creation of the canvas, I learned that while NDSU has plenty of cool people doing cool things, very few of them actually know about each other. Fewer still actually talk with each other or attempt to cooperate. We're going to fix that by compiling the most comprehensive single resource index that NDSU has ever seen- a distillation of the Landscape Canvas, with a few tweaks for organization, etc. This will truly allow anyone interested to find out what is going on around campus, the level/scale of the work, and most importantly, who to contact for more information. Think of this: an entire wiki dedicated explicitly to categorizing and displaying all of the innovative activities on campus, editable and accesible by those doing the innovation!
  • Team Leader:: Andrew Dalman. I'm going to take lead on the initial formation of this, as I've already done some of the work for the Landscape Canvas. This project may best be set up as an NDSU innovation wiki, requiring very little oversight.
• Milestones:

1. Fleshing out of the Landscape Canvas & reformatting it. The canvas, while 'done' (and never will be), is still being tweaked and added to as busy faculty get around to finding time to meet. The Canvas also requires a total reformat in order to be presentible in wiki form, at leasy in the way Andy envisions it. Schedule: Early November 2013
2. Launch of wiki. A wiki is expected to be a constantly evolving creature, so aside from risk of a 'premature' launch with no content, the wiki can be launched early. Schedule: Mid December 2013; Give 1 month to create and populate pages for all of the Landscape Canvas entries.
3. Notification of all entries of their presence in the wiki. It's now their responsibility to keep their pages up to date. The objective is for the wiki to be THE resource amongst the NDSU I&E community, so groups will have motivation to keep their page up-to-date. Schedule: Launch of Wiki - 1 week, if possible. This is to allow groups to make changes to their preset pages.

Strategy #2: ________

Following are an array of strategies that will fully address Gap #2 over a 2-3 year period:

Tactic #1: [Name of tactic]

• Description [250 words on why this strategy will solve this gap on your campus]
• Team Leader:: [Either your name, TBD or create a title assigned to the person who volunteers]
• Milestones: [A set of bullets that characterize the work that would likely need to be executed, along with mm/yy]

Tactic #2: [Name of tactic]

• Description [250 words on why this strategy will solve this gap on your campus]
• Team Leader:: [Either your name, TBD or create a title assigned to the person who volunteers]
• Milestones: [A set of bullets that characterize the work that would likely need to be executed, along with mm/yy]

Tactic #3: [Name of tactic]

• Description [250 words on why this strategy will solve this gap on your campus]
• Team Leader: [Either your name, TBD or create a title assigned to the person who volunteers]
• Milestones: [A set of bullets that characterize the work that would likely need to be executed, along with mm/yy]