Making A Difference

The University of Cincinnati College of Applied Science requires seniors across all disciplines to complete a senior design project for graduation. The College shows off the students work in an annual Tech Expo. Each year, of the 30 to 40 senior designs submitted in the IT program, perhaps 2 or 3 of these are innovative enough to become the foundation of stand-alone businesses. I’ve followed these projects over the last 2 1/2 years and have noticed a gap that does not allow a smooth transition of these senior designs into the start-up environment after graduation.

Instead of leveraging local relationships and resources to get their businesses off the ground, a couple of things happen. First, the students may not even realize the value of their idea, so rather than pursuing innovation, the idea dies as the student takes a full-time job. Probably more detrimental to regional vitality, students may understand their innovation, and because the local relationships don’t exist, a student may pursue the growth of their idea by taking it to VCs in Silicon Valley or the east coast. In this case, the region loses both the talent and the idea as the student picks up and moves to another region.

In an effort to remedy this situation, as well as draw new energy and young talent to the region and the University, the College of Applied Science IT discipline has created the Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in IT (COI). The goal of the COI will be to develop a framework and a gateway to allow smooth transition of viable ideas into startup businesses. To this end, the COI will develop a curriculum program to bring business skills to technologists. This curriculum will cover subjects such as developing business plans and product development. The COI will also foster relationships with local entrepreneurs, matching successful business people with seniors to provide mentoring and guidance for their ideas. The college currently supports many local companies through both a co-op program as well as training their future workforce. The COI will leverage these relationships and partner with some of these companies to funnel new ideas into the senior design process, and offer these companies opportunities for first-looks at ideas in development. Additional partnerships with venture capitalists, local incubators, intellectual property managers within the University, and the College of Business will round out much of the infrastructure necessary to create the COI framework.

The framework is currently in development with a near-term desire to pilot the process with seniors graduating in the class of 2010. Informally, seniors graduating in 2009 may have an opportunity to participate in the COI as pieces are put in place this year. Longer range, the COI may work with the College to develop a graduate IT program that would allow a longer incubation and transition of ideas out of the University and into the start-up environment. Additionally, the COI may develop programs that begin building a business foundation in the sophomore and junior years.

I would like to call out the forward and visionary thinking of Dr. Hazem Said, the IT Program department head, for understanding the viability of the ideas his students have produced, and looking for opportunities to broaden and strengthen their education. The COI will become just one more regional initiative to both retain the creative, young professional class in Cincinnati as well as draw them here with innovative and cutting-edge opportunities that they would not get elsewhere.

- Andy

This entry was posted Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Cincinnati IT Community. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.