Innovation Cell

We help our students and partners to develop innovative products and services based on advanced technologies; and we guide new entrepreneurs through creating companies with effective business plans to attract investment and create value.

We do this by offering courses, workshops, and mentoring services in knowledge, skills, and competencies. We link engineering entrepreneurs to mentors and advisors in the technological entrepreneurship ecosystem. We have state-of-the-art facilities. Incubator space gives teams thinking space for design and business development, training, mentorship, and client meetings. Our new maker space allow young entrepreneurs to produce working prototypes and even their first minimum viable product.

We currently conduct training sessions on entrepreneurship, targeted to students in Engineering. Alumni and local businesses regularly support design and development of new technologies, in some cases supporting prizes for design competitions.

Workshops in technology development and commercialization are being developed to foster competency in ideation (coming up with a good idea), systems thinking (understanding whether there is a market need and how to create a business to meet the need), leadership (how to establish and lead an organization to achieve a worthwhile goal), commercialization (how to run a commercial organization effectively to deliver a value proposition to customers), and diversity (the value that different people bring to a team in their knowledge, skills, perspective, experiences, and values).

Key Topics Include

• Ideation and creative thinking

• Assessing the value proposition and the market need

• Forming the core team

• Proving the concept

• Protecting intellectual property

• Understanding scale-up

• Engaging the market

• Making the business plan

• Securing initial financing

• Testing the engineering prototype

• Understanding regulatory requirements

• Making the company real: the value of diverse teams

• Producing the Minimum Viable Product

• Marketing and selling product