Priorities:Missouri University of Science and Technology Priorities

Overview

Missouri S&T's strength in the experiential learning and research activities of its STEM programs gives it huge potential for supporting innovation and entrepreneurship activities. Analysis of S&T's Spring 2015 landscape canvas has demonstrated its strengths in the area of building technical skills for student innovation and excellent support for spinning-out startups thanks to the growing St. Louis entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Strategy #1: Expose Students to Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Inspire them to Learn More

The first step to a student's education in innovation and entrepreneurship is to introduce them to these ideas and encourage them to learn more. Programs may facilitate this discovery process.

Tactic #1: Create an Entrepreneur Speaker Series to Educate and Inspire

Description:

Missouri S&T's campus has the potential to support a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship; however, the lack of student and faculty exposure to such thoughts and attitudes prevents its growth. The creation of a startup speaker series hosting entrepreneurs, investors, founders of social benefit organizations, entrepreneurship support organizations, and others seeks to spark conversations among students and faculty about innovation and entrepreneurship.

S&T's entrepreneurship club, TIES, will host the "Spark Speaker Series" for the first time in the Spring 2015 semester. At this time eight speakers have been confirmed, with more in the works. This is enough to host a speaker at least every other week, with the ultimate goal being to host one every week. Ultimately, it is desirable to further expand the series into a 1 credit-hour seminar that any student could enroll in.

Team Lead: Josh Jetter

Milestones:

Phase 1: Bi-weekly or weekly speaker series hosted by TIES. Run through the Spring 2015 semester. Expand to reach at least 50 students per event.

Phase 2: Transition into a 1 credit-hour seminar available to all students. Enroll at least 100 students in the Fall 2015 offering of the class.

Tactic #2: Create a 1000 Pitches Style Event to Engage Students

Description:

Expose and engage students of all backgrounds in the creativity and innovation process. Have them craft a simple pitch about their idea and then feed them into more developed innovation and entrepreneurship programs. This would be an instance of this program.

Team Lead:

None at this time (this is a future program).

Milestones:

Fall 2015: Introduce program, reach at least 100 students

Spring 2016: Expand program to at least 250 students

Fall 2016: Engage at least 500 students

Tactic #3: Increase Visibility of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Activities

Description:

An important part of facilitating the growth of any movement is to celebrate its successes. Increasing the visibility of all activities related to innovation and entrepreneurship helps to establish a common mindset and culture. This is a first step to establishing early engagement with students, faculty, administration, alumni, and industry partners. Execution of this would center around producing PR materials such as blog posts, press releases, news articles, newsletters, etc. covering successes from activities such as the Innovation Fellows programs, the Pathways to Innovation program, research commercialization, I-Corps related activities, student and/or alumni run startups, and others.

Team Lead:

To be determined (acting via the S&T Communications office)

Milestones:

To be determined

Strategy #2: Establish Opportunities to Build Skills in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Creativity

Missouri S&T has extensive opportunities to build technology, engineering, and limited business skills through experiential learning programs such as its student design teams. Opportunities dedicated specificially to building the "soft skills" critical to the execution of all real-world ventures are more lacking. Key areas that need to be addressed in the context of innovation and entrepreneurship include communications, marketing, and branding; customer discovery and lean startup methodologies; creative problem solving and innovationg methods; and many others. In addition to be directly applicable to innovation and entrepreneurship, these skills also make students highly desirable employees for existing companies.

Tactic #1: Creation of a Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Minor

Description:

Students have limited opportunities to build skills important to innovation and entrepreneurship in the academic setting. The creation of a Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship minor would allow students of all degree programs to build these skills. Proposed courses that would count towards the minor (some existing and some new; not all required to obtain minor):

• Domain Exploration and Innovation Methods - Explore the different methods and concepts of problem definition and ideation. Material will focus on the first step of innovation and encourages students to adopt a mindset that looks for solvable problems. 
• Skill Development for Entrepreneurs - A little bit of everything - being a founder requires wearing many hats, often at the same time. This course will offer an intensive introduction to many of the key skills you will need to understand including: programming, project management, CAD, machining, Circuit Board Design, asking questions, negotiation, listening, and more.
• Advanced Domain Exploration and Innovation Methods - Study the second and third steps of innovation: blueprinting and assessing ideas. Students will explore 5-10 disparate domains, look for solvable problems, and create and assess solutions. Entering the class with a 'founding team' of 2-5 other students is recommended.
• Interpersonal Dynamics - Explore the boundaries of group dynamics, methods of creating lasting relationships, and the dynamics of communication in various situations.
• Lean LaunchPad and Agile Methods - Study agile methods of business creation through the Lean Launchpad model. Entrance into the class requires a 'founding team' of 2-5 students prepared to tackle a problem and create a company. Work will require intensive customer interviews and "getting out of the classroom" to learn.
• Technical Entrepreneur Development - Offers an opportunity for students to further engage the Lean Launchpad model and develop their business model.
• Mentoring Technical Innovation - True understanding comes when you can teach something yourself. Mentor a team through Lean Launchpad & Agile Methods, and perfect your knowledge of agile project management.

Team Lead: Dr. Bonnie Bachmann and Ian Lee

Milestones:

Tactic #2: Encourage Participation in StartUp Weekends, Hackathons, and Similar Activities

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Strategy #3: Provide Students with Opportunities to Experiment and Test New Ideas

Once students have an interest in innovation and have built the necessary skills, it is important to allow them experiment with and test out their new ideas. Programs and resources should facilitate their creative problem solving processes, customer discover, and prototype development.

Tactic #1: Create a Student Creativity/Ideation/Maker Space

Description:

Once students have built skills and interest in innovation and entrepreneurship, it is necessary to facilitate the growth of their ideas, and assist them in establishing product-market fit. A creativity, ideation, and maker space provides students with a location to work with one another to identify, develop, and prototype innovative solutions to real-world problems. This is an important prerequisite before the formation and execution of a formal commercial or not-for-profit venture.

At this point, the following requirements have been identified for the space:

• Student accessible 24/7
• In a central, highly visible location on campus
• Infrastructure in place for facilitating creative problem solving and group conversation
  • Whiteboards and/or Flipcharts
  • Multimedia equipment (sound, projector/TV, etc.)
  • Adaptable furniture (rearrangeable seating and tables)
• Infrastructure in place for basic prototyping
  • 3D printer
  • 3D scanner
• Presence of an "idea wall" for engaging public in creativity and innovation
• TV screen with calendar of upcoming I&E events

Team Lead:

Josh Jetter, Ian Lee, Cori Hatley, Mary Paleo

Milestones:

Phase 1: Create a space immediately by renovating an existing space

• End of February: Identify a viable location for space
• End of March: Finish raising funds and have complete design/definition of this iteration of the space

Phase 2: Create a permanent space

Tactic #2: Provide Access to Prototyping Resources through the Creation of the SDELC Student Innovation Team

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Strategy #4: Facilitate Student Pursuit of Startup Activities within the University Context

Once students have validated their ideas through experimentation, it is necessary to provide them with the resources to pursue commercialization and execution.

Tactic #1: Grow Business Incubator and Accelerator Resources

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Tactic #2: Provide Opportunities for Mentorship

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Tactic #3: Provide Opportunities for Obtaining Early Seed Funding

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Startegy #5: Encourage Research Commercialization

Tactic #1: Obtain I-Corps Site Designation

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Tactic #2: Foster a Culture of Entrepreneurship among Gradudate Students and Faculty

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Strategy #6: Establish Program Continuity

Tactic #1: Establish a Champion for Development of Entrepreneurship Programs

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Tactic #2: Establish Entrepreneur in Residence Positions

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Tactic #3: Identify and Train Future Change-Makers

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