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.

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

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Tactic #3: Increase Visibility of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Activities

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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

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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

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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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