Priorities:Cal Poly SLO I&E Improvement and Expansion
Contents
Video
Description
What follows is a list of six strategies that will guide Cal Poly's Entrepreneurship program and the innovative ecosystem at the school to greater potential and achievement.
Six Strategies
Meeting of the Minds
The first step towards success is knowing your outcome. In a meeting with those people who have the power to improve the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, we will accomplish the following:
- Specifiy areas needing improvement
- Assign responsibilities for projects
- Set goals for the next year, two years, and four years.
This meeting will include myself, and other leaders from the I&E ecosystem.
2 Revamp the Current Model
Its no use expanding something not ready to be expanded, we need to make sure the fundamental model we are building off of is sturdy.
We will do this by:
- Improving the teamwork between CIE, The Hatchery, and CPE
- Increasing attendance to programs and CPE meetings
- Increasing visibility of each program
3 Implement Physical Expansion
It's not enough to occupy the campus as an idea; we have to be a physical presence as well. An expansion of our functional space will help us capture a larger audience as well as provide more resources. The CEO of software company Vertigo recently said in a talk with Cal Poly Entrepreneurs "The most valuable resource you can have is whiteboard space".
This will come in the form of:
- Expanding our maker space, The Innovation Sandbox while providing it more resources
4 Implement Interdisciplinary Expansion
To create a schoolwide ecosystem that is necessary that our programs provide resources that are useful to multiple majors.
We will do this by:
- Working with the creative media and development club to put on more events like "Hackathon"
- targeting on discipline such as Biochemistry or computer science to build innovative resources for within our spaces.
5 Step It Up
This strategy is about going big, hosting huge events that can't help but draw a lot of attention and participation.
For example:
- Hosting a TEDx event centered on implementing design into any discipline
- Starting our first competition for funding above $20k
- Working with local businesses for profit
- Bringing in speakers from Google and Stanford
6 Systemize Sustainability
Innovation should never stop, which is we we need systems in place to insure it never does.
These include:
- Assimilation of new UIF
- Continued funding for I&E
- Continued addition of programs
- Continued review of efficacy of programs
- Ways to remove/combine programs
Conclusion
All of these strategies can begin being implemented immediately but, If we focus on each step in order, the following step with have a far more powerful effect. Each step builds awareness and trust with the students and school from the grassroots and up, once we have the community's vote of confidence we will be able to move mountains. Sure, we could put on a TEDx event centered on innovation hosting 500+ students, but what happens when those students get interested? They flow into a program that wasn't ready with enough quality resources (wasn't revamped) to fit a wide variety of needs (interdisciplinary expansion), and worse, we wouldn't even have enough space to accommodate these new comers! Order is important in this strategy flow.
One more thing, this is not a static list but a cycle. we will continue to set goals, expand physically and via programs, step it up by increasing our ambitions, and the sustainability system too will be revised and keep this cycle going.
My name is Nicholas Sinai, I am the University Innovation Fellow for Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and I am honored to be a part of this movement toward greatness.
