Priorities:Missouri University of Science and Technology Priorities
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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
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Team Lead: Josh Jetter
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Phase 1: Weekly speaker series hosted by TIES
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Tactic #2: Create a 1000 Pitches Style Event to Engage Students
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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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