April 26
This week in Innovate, students have been working on documenting their build plans and finalizing their prototypes. The students have also been preparing for their final presentations which include a 30 minute proof of concept defense and a three minute pitch during a showcase. On Tuesday, students also had the opportunity to have a lunch with a CEO through the Vistage Group series. All prototypes are looking great and the students are working hard to prepare for market testing of their ideas.
April 19
This week in Innovate, students prepared for their Project Lead the Way senior showcase at Union Station. Students worked to showcase prototypes and create visual representations of the work they have been completing this semester. The students are in the process of finalizing the builds for their innovations in order to begin testing. The students also participated in an ideation session with a CAPS alumnus to validate and provide input for new features for the online application, Fannect. Students have also been working to document the process of ideation to production through a technical paper and portfolio.
April 5
This week in Innovate, students have been working on building prototypes for their solutions. The students also prepared 30 second and three minute pitches for a competition at KCKCC for their State Street Perfect Pitch competition. Friday, all students attended the pitch competition and participated in the Innovation Summit at KCKCC. Watch channel 9 this evening to catch a glimpse of the Innovate students.
March 30
The week back from spring break was a busy one in INNOVATE with students preparing for the “perfect pitch challenge,” participating in the Kauffman Fast-Trac certification program and volunteering for the BIG KC event. Judges with KCK Community College spent a day at CAPS listening to our student startup teams pitch their ideas. Over half the students who presented have been selected for the exhibit day next Friday where business mentors and investors will be using monopoly money to spend on top breakthrough ideas. Top earners will then have a pitch-off for real cash in the end!
Students who have their business concept developed have chosen to certify in the Kauffman Fast-Trac program where they are able to continue their business planning and development in a formalized context. Our International Business instructors facilitated the training for all CAPS students interested in certification.
The middle of the week was spent downtown at the KC airport for the inaugural BIG KC event. The event featured top entrepreneurs and innovators from KC and the coasts for an inspirational speaking series. CAPS students partnered with Silicon Prairie News to support the successful event and gain networking opportunities for the students. Many great contacts were created and ideas put into action.
March 15
This week in Innovate, students worked to focus on a single solution after starting from a field of 50 solutions. The students also previewed prototypes of the solution to show the possibilities of their innovation. The students worked on a material list to gather supplies for a more formal prototype and also started to work on build plans. The students have been meeting with mentors to get feedback on their ideas and culminated their week with a social event to share their work with students from other strands at CAPS. The students are planning on enjoying spring break and coming back to participate in the
Kauffman Fast Trac program and to volunteer at
Big KC .
March 1
This week, the students in Innovate have had the opportunity to practice project management skills while enjoying several snow days. The students were able to collaborate with the entire class to discover fifty solutions to their self-generated problem statements. From these fifty solutions, the students are tasked with picking a single solution. Using a Pugh Chart as an organizational tool, the students evaluate their survey results and customer interviews to determine the criteria to measure the benefit of each of their fifty solutions when compared to current solutions on the market.
February 15
Students spent this week in Innovate exploring their problem statements, and preparing for their student showcase on Thursday, 2/14. With their teams, the students created and distributed surveys, and conducted personal interviews to get feedback about the problem that they are going to solve this semester.
In addition to feedback, the students also had to research current solutions and products that already exist in that area, and consider possible parameters of their own solution. They made a list of things their solution needs to have, and things they want it to have, and the scope that the solution will have to cover. All this work should help the students start to shape their solution for the problem in the next week.
February 1
The week spent in INNOVATE was filled with meeting 2 major milestones…the TEAM and the PROBLEM. To assist with finalizing the teams, the students participated in a “fast pitch” event where individuals basically speed dated for 3 minutes to learn about interest areas of possible team members. This proved to be a successful event following some of the previous action based networking activities from our initial boot camp. To assist with identifying problem areas, fellow Pipeline member and CAPS mentor, Dr. Stuart Jackson presented to students on discovering disruptive innovations.
Now that students have partnered in a co-founding type approach, they will get out of the building for customer discovery and initial market research to see just how big their problems are. The week concluded with a CAPS Social Hour hosted by INNOVATE students in the accelerator with the intent being networking 101.
January 25
This week in Innovate, students worked to discover their unique problem or opportunity for their semester long project. Students were introduced to Inspiration software as an ideation mapping tool, and were issued a mini-design challenge to develop their own recording device for their ideas and sketches over the semester. On Wednesday, students immersed themselves in their interest areas and completed field observations to discover a unique problem to solve. On Thursday, students updated their resumes and worked on their personal stories as a continuation of their professional development. Finally, on Friday, students had the opportunity to tour
Think Big and investigate a commercial venture to support start-up businesses in the Kansas City area.
January 18
This week in the Innovate class, business students, teacher education students and core Innovate students worked on a mini design challenge to re-design the education experience. Approximately 30 students in each session collaborated on 12 teams to identify a problem in the current education system, ideate a solution, design the solution and present the team’s concept over 3 days.
Our incredible colleagues at
Stanley Elementary provided the venue for research for the challenge and provided an incredibly open and welcoming experience for the students to discover their interest in solving education problems. On Thursday, the students worked on developing their personal story and utilized an online portfolio tool,
FolioBoy, before presenting their 30-second “elevator pitch” to the rest of the group.
Finally, on Friday, the students toured
Dimensional Innovations to experience product development, from the ideation process to manufacturing.
January 14
The new team of INNOVATE students kicked off their semester in the newly completed Accelerator space featuring talent from engineering, bioscience, business, and design. Our approach to the two week boot camp is to first understand what it means to "Orbit the Giant Hairball,” which is the core of our culture at CAPS. We then discover our individual strengths so that we fully understand what to bring to the team and what to look for in others. Mid-week we jumped into some action based networking to begin the courting process of building a team. One of the key activities was the 90 minute crash course in Design Thinking from the Stanford Design School. To learn more about design thinking, view
last week's episode on CBS - 60 minutes featuring David Kelly and IDEO.
To finish the week off, the team invaded Startup Village, a grassroots community of entrepreneurs located in Hanover Heights Fiberhood with the recent addition of Google Fiber. Local Ruckus, Leap2 and EyeVerify are just a few of the Startups we connected with. To learn more about the visit, click this post by
Silicone Prairie News.