Changes

Ohio University is a beautiful campus with a plethora of entrepreneurship and innovation resources; however, the problem lies in the disconnect amongst the various great opportunities on campus! There are plenty of students interested in exploring their ideas, but very few know where to begin their innovation journey -- that's where we hope to come in with programming to educate about entrepreneurship and the facilities to support new ideas.

Fall 2019

Fall 2018

Spring 2014

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<font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">'''Innovating the First Year Experience'''</span></font>

<span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></span></span>

<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-d7050379-7fff-6dd6-55a7-6abe15474307"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Breaking Down Campus Silos and Creating I&E Awareness</span></span></span>

<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We’ve noticed that the campus is highly segmented by college and&nbsp;</span></span></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-abf45206-7fff-c986-72b5-fb3550c5c43a"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">major,&nbsp;</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and that there is a lack of awareness about what I&E looks like on campus and what the resources are for I&E at OU. By introducing the First University Class, we will be able to unite students across campus and share with them the rich history of OU, let them hear from some of our most notable alumni, and share with them the resources on campus that can turn their I&E dreams into (works in progress or) reality. By working to break down the subject major silos, we expect to have a more fruitful I&E environment at OU as collaboration will surely lead to great ideas.</span></span></span>

Objective: Create a peer to peer mentoring program that assist students in ideation and business plan development. Students that are interested and somewhat experienced in entrepreneurship and innovation will volunteer time to host table walk up hours where students can collaborate with the peer in various ways whether it be spitballing a new idea, filling out a business model canvas, or discussing their business plan.

A resource that enables students to talk anything entrepreneurial with another student would encourage and inform students to pursue innovation and entrepreneurship. As more and more walk up hours are held, students will become more familiar with this programs purpose which will result in more participation. Advertising through the Center for Entrepreneurship and other media outlets will drive the participation up higher and the peer mentoring service will grow and evolve. Since this program is focused on collaboration and diversity students who use the service will be encouraged to get involved and take a peer role. In a few years this program will be able to connect students to student peers who love ideating and collaborating.

The first session of this program involved one participant, but yielded great feedback. The participant came to the table and inquired about entrepreneurship in general. After sitting down and encourage to ideate the participant came up with her first business idea, transporting college students around using a bicycle and a trolley. Through collaboration, the participant and the peer worked through the business model canvas and their time together resulted in a new found interest for entrepreneurship and a filled out canvas.&nbsp;

In the Classroom

Because of this, our first strategy for augmenting Ohio University's entrepreneurial impact is getting basic entrepreneurship coursework into every introductory and career orientation class. English major or pre-med, basic entrepreneurial knowledge will help to set students up for success after graduation by instilling in them the fact that entrepreneurship is an option, and one they have an understanding of, regardless of wether they pursue their own company,

Ohio University is not yet known for being an entrepreneurial powerhouse, but we are on that track! It is about time that there are workshops specificially geared toward innovation and entrepreneurship. These could include two-week programs on web app development or two-hour workshops on how to fill out a business model canvas and survey end users. By starting off with reasonable time-commitments and relevant subject-material, Ohio University will be able to grow its workshop model to rival top programs.

Residential Aspect

Workspace

Even without living in an incubator, students should always have access to an innovation-conducive environment. One way to make sure all students feel like they have access is to centrally locate whatever new resources there are, and to try to shift the existing resources into more convenient locations. Bridging together the multitude of resources Ohio University has will not be an easy task, but it will ensure that a student always has somewhere to go with an idea, for mentorship, or for a workspace.

Brick and Mortar

Authors: [[Faith Voinovich|Faith Voinovich]]&nbsp;and [[Benjamin Scott|Ben Scott]]

The mission of CC STAG is to bring organizations, under the umbrella of entrepreneurship, together to provide key strategic advice as well as revealing synergies between the groups in order to collaborate together & maximize value added. The CC STAG will be the first of many steps in the pursuit of breaking down the barriers between the different disciplines on campus. This will lead into the planning of a cross disciplinary innovation course. The course will bring students from different majors and different colleges on campus into the process of solving real world problems and working towards the creation of startups.

-provide student entrepreneurs with access to a student coach that will work with that student from ideation to launch -provide student entrepreneurs with a mentor from someone in their respective industry or entrepreneurial experience -connect student with resources on campus in order to help them pursue their goals -provide opportunities to pursue their idea upon completion of the Bobcat Hatchery Program

We will do this through an array of methods.

We will transform the way we present information across campus and encourage the conversation.

The Ohio University I&E Ecosystem will be fueled by the consistent learning and participation of I&E topics. &nbsp;We will facilitate this need through these methods: Organization and execution of a large bi-annual Speaker Program. The program will be similar to TEDx events in that the mission will be “ideas worth spreading”. We will pull resources from our Ohio University community the surrounding communities as well as encourage alumni and established innovators to participate. The practice of broadening our horizons and bringing communities from all over the world into Athens & Ohio University. By means of virtual communication, actually visiting these communities and spreading their ideals after research.

The I&E community will come together to support our student entrepreneurs. We will encourage, enable, empower and enrich each student in order to help them become the greatest versions of themselves. &nbsp;The knowledge, experience and wisdom they gain from the community will directly and indirectly better their ideas and businesses

Overview

With this in mind, these are my Strategic Priorities:

(See Spring 2014 project pitch video above, by John Herbert.)

It's my goal to massively accelerate the growth of student business launch numbers every year by making the business startup just something that's accepted that you do as a student here at OU. I want OU to make Ycombinator, MIT, and Stanford feel jealous, simple as that.

Roll out the program as an official offering for all engineering students in the Fall of 2014.

Tie these programs together so students can actually collaborate on a startup with complementary skills.

In order to build a more centralized space for applied innovation at OU I believe that we must first determine exactly what that space needs to be, and that we should draw out the entrepreneurial culture from our students instead of saying "this is how people should innovate here" and forcing them to adapt to it. Forcing adaption to a culture would cause friction, whereas finding the culture that is here and encouraging it to grow naturally will be much more efficient. We already have most of the resources we need, so simply building and stocking a new maker space right off the bat wil be highly redundant. The only problem with the current system is that everything is spread out into the different spheres of influence (machining in engineering, low resolution prototyping in arts, workspaces and consulting/funding in entrepreneurship) without much connection between them. I propose looking at this problem exactly as I would if it was a business startup using lean methodology.

Every little bit of budget we save with this method could be spent on funding real projects! Instead of a multi-million dollar building, or a massive shuffle of offices, we'll focus on building a functional system of productive innovation that can start working immediately and will produce actionable data that we can use to validate future spending. When this reaches a critical mass, then we can worry about building more centralized workspaces that can meet the needs of everything from machine design to software development to artistic productions, and keep it staffed with network members and I&E specialist mentors.

I've already started building the foundation for this by networking with key faculty in multiple departments and learning how we can build bridges and "intellectual trade routes" between them. I was just talking with Dr. Luke Pittaway (Head of the Center for Entrepreneurship, our I&E majors department) about a need for this exact solution and he agreed, stating that he also had a group of faculty in the CfE who have come to the same conclusion.

The system would grow organically from then on as more network members bring in access to more resources and can reach out to more students. Bringing more departments into the fold will also provide access to more free marketing that will improve student awareness.

The ''Get Up!''&nbsp;movement will be a means of tapping into the schedules of multiple programs and organizations in order to provide students with a running itinerary of everything I&E-related happening that day. Student champions will track events and activities at multiple I&E-related organizations and produce a weekly newsletter that makes it easy for a student to find events that match up with their free time and make better use of it by learning and doing more I&E.

The ''Get Up!'' movement will act as a stand-in for that site until it's complete, and hopefully increase awareness for Startlocal among people who want to contribute to it.

Everyone needs a space to make, but what do you do once you've made your product? I want to set up storefronts for vending and customer interaction in high traffic areas around campus. I want to see something between a covered bus-stop and a small climate-controlled building that offers students the ability to set up wares and displays/ads, and lock them up after hours so they don't have to stock and unstock every day (if these could be climate-controlled then that would allow them to operate year-round; something like a more customer-accessible Betabox might do nicely). This will allow students to start selling their physical products, as well as promote their non-physical ones (through iPad kiosks and the like) with as little hassle as possible so that they can immediately start engaging with potential customers and collect data on what those customers want and how their product is actually selling. This is the data that investors want to see before being willing to buy in and take your products around the world.

We have a serious problem here. Our Technology Transfer Office (TTO) is basically limited to faculty when it comes to handling things like patents and intellectual property. Our town doesn't even have a patent attorney. I even play Magic: The Gathering (MTG) with one of our local lawyers at his comic book shop every week, and he can't recommend anyone within an hour's drive to handle the IP side of business legal needs. Much of this can be done online now, but you can learn a lot more about what you need to do in your current situation when you can just sit down and talk with someone face to face.

I then plan to start tying that together with other groups already working on marketing and branding so that students have a one-stop-shop for building a legitimate entity with a presence in the market.

Athens has a great (or horrible, depending on your perspective) party culture. Even in Ohio University Entrepreneurs many people would rather do socials/mixers than more entrepreneurial activities. What we need to do is tap into that social energy to get students introduced to I&E at a very basic level, but on a larger scale than can generally be handled by closed-registration events like Startup Weekend.

The goal would be to get an annual (or maybe even semesterly) block party that takes a lot of the basic ideas for events like Startup Weekend and have presenters share them in layman's terms between sets of live music and entertainment. There would be a few scheduled events on a Friday night, a Saturday, and a Sunday that would introduce the key bits of information students need to refine a business idea by the end of Sunday. Anyone who wants to could present their team's idea on the main stage at the final event on Sunday. This way, more students can participate in a more casual atmosphere that gels with their comfort zone better than formal dinners with elevator pitches.

[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Ohio_University Ohio University]