Yesterday, students met in DifferenceMaker Central for some pizza during the first session of the Entrepreneurship Lunch Series! From 12-1p.m., students from many different majors took advantage of the opportunity to hear from Professors Michelle Bazin and Deb Finch about non-profit organizations and their place within the entrepreneurial world.
We will be holding lunches every Tuesday in October so come join us next week on October 11 in DifferenceMaker Central – Lydon Library, Suite 012!
On Monday, October 3, 2016, DifferenceMaker faculty fellow and LLC (Living-Learning Community) advisor John Brown, along with Professor Steve Tello, met with students in Bourgeois Hall for an LLC event. Students gathered in the common room of the fourth floor to enjoy pizza while learning more about the DifferenceMaker program and discuss opportunities and ideas they have.
About 15 students stopped by over the course of an hour from 6:00-7:00p.m.
To learn more about DifferenceMaker, visit our website!
On Wednesday, September 28, 2016, DifferenceMaker held its Season Kickoff event College Competition announcement! Starting at 5:30 in Moloney Hall at University Crossing, students had the opportunity to hear more about the DifferenceMaker program from Professor Steve Tello.
Students also heard from professionals about each of the three college competitions coming up this semester. Chris McKenna introduced the Francis College of Engineering Prototyping Competition, Jim Regan spoke about the DCU/MSB Innovation Contest, and Glenn Morgan discussed the FAHSS Creative Venture Competition. Holly Butler, Director of the DifferenceMaker program, then introduced an ideation activity to engage students in entrepreneurial thinking.
At the end of the ideation session, students had the opportunity to network with members of the professional community like mentors, advisors, faculty, and alumni.
The applications for the 2016 College Competitions close on October 31.
On Wednesday, August 31, 2016, UMass Lowell welcomed nearly 2,600 new freshmen and transfer students at convocation. That is the largest incoming class to date!
DifferenceMaker welcomed new students with a fun and interactive pitch contest where students themselves were the judges! With simple text-voting, everyone attending convocation was able to vote for the team they thought pitched the best! Three DifferenceMaker teams pitched at this year’s convocation.
eNABLE Lowell took 1st place and won $1,500! eNABLE Lowell is a chapter of the larger, national eNABLE organization that helps provide low cost prosthetic hands to children in need.
invisaWear won 2nd place and a prize of $1,000! invisaWear is a wearable device that sits discretely within a piece of jewelry that when activated, alerts predetermined contacts, as well as the emergency services that the individual wearing invisaWear has been attacked and is in danger.
Happy Heart Cart won 3rd place and a prize of $500! Happy Heart Cart is an initiative to help bring fun activities to patients in hospitals. Keeping a mind and heart happy while in the hospital leads to better recovery and shorter stays!
After convocation, DifferenceMaker, along with the three teams that pitched, spoke to students about the program at the tables at Club Fair! Students interested in the DifferenceMaker program were able to ask more questions with our Co-Op students and sign up to hear from our Newsletter! We also had lots of free give-aways and trinkets for students who visited our table!
On Thursday, June 30, DifferenceMaker teams, faculty fellows, alumni, and mentors gathered at the UMass Lowell Innovation Hub for the 2016 Demo Day. Demo Day presents an opportunity for student teams to network with potential mentors and other interested parties. After the networking session, each team presents their project to the audience consisting of many mentors from all different backgrounds and careers. After each presentation, there is also a Q&A period where student teams answer any questions from the audience to help them learn more about the goals of each team. DifferenceMaker staff then help to pair up student teams with willing mentors to help further the DifferenceMaker projects.
As the summer boot camp series comes to an end, student teams spent the last session participating in in-depth discussion on capturing value and cost consideration. Teams discussed questions like
Teams also had the chance to learn from and speak with a past DifferenceMaker team, Nonspec, who won the Campus-Wide DifferenceMaker award in 2013.
A big thank you to this session’s special guests!
The last boot-camp session also yielded great results for teams and advisors. Teams participated in an in-depth discussion about the presentation of their “Solution”, the third step in the DifferenceMaker Method. Each team presented their findings from their homework on Customer and Value Proposition and received comments and suggestions from advisors and fellow DifferenceMaker teams for improvement.
There was also a “Round Robin” Advisory Session where each team was able to spend 10 minutes with each alumni mentor for advice and comments on their project’s business model so far.
We look forward to next week’s session with all of our DifferenceMaker teams, faculty fellows, alumni, and mentors!
A big thank you to this session’s special guests:
by Stephen Kender
From June 22nd to June 24th, I was invited to attend and help facilitate a workshop at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. Hosted by the White House, this summit brings together hundreds of innovators from all over the world, and is held in a different location every year. This year, President Obama brought the event to the heart of Silicon Valley at Stanford University, a place known globally for its ability to cultivate incredible entrepreneurial talent.
I was invited through the University Innovation Fellows program, an organization dedicated to spreading entrepreneurship throughout higher education, who are based in Stanford University. Their training connects university students across the continent and empowers them to be effective agents of change on their campuses, putting a special focus on working with administrations and communities to create cultures and landscapes that spur the next generation of big thinkers. The program is in its 5th year and is 600-strong (and counting). I went through the training this past year and have already benefitted incredibly from it, starting the university’s first hackathon (called Hawkathon) and being more aware of the ways I can help my university flourish.
The program submitted a proposal for a workshop to the State Department titled “Hack Your Creative Culture” in partnership with the Stanford d.school and Google. The event emphasized the idea that students and young entrepreneurs have the abilities to reshape their nations academic, industrial, and community organizations, and it is up to those communities and institutions to cultivate the skills and mindsets necessary for them to be changemakers. It challenged attendees to imagine how they would go back to their homes and design a culture that spurs such boundless ideation and creativity and brings out the best in their nation’s entrepreneurial talent. The program then invited 10 University Innovation Fellows to help facilitate the event, and I was honored to be among those selected.
The workshop was laid out in 4 major segments – people, place, process, and purpose – which are important to keep in mind when designing a culture for creativity and innovation. Each segment of the event would include activities and presentations from the Fellows in the unique form of ignite talks. Ignite talks are pitches of ~15 slides which automatically advance every 15 seconds. This means that the presenter has to distill their message down to the core concepts, which is beneficial to the learning of both the presenter and the audience.
My talk was about place, and it was titled “Thinking Like Birds: Spaces for Creativity”. Weird, right? After lightly confusing my audience for the first 45 seconds as I talked about space design, I made the connection between birds and people on the creative process. Like birds, someone looking to innovate needs to find a good spot to create a team and an environment to build their idea. This spot can be called a “branch” and the environment is the “nest” where the idea (egg) can be incubated. When the idea is brought through to market viablility, it is hatched out onto the rest of the world. And much like birds, a true entreprenuer is always looking for the next spot to build a nest. In addition, I spoke to the ability of most birds to be extensively adaptable and incredible problem-solvers, both of which are qualities seen in successful innovators. I then went on to stress the importance that communities and universities build those branches for young entrepreneurs to plant their stake in.
Being able to not only attend but speak at such a presitigious event was completely unexpected yet so exciting. It was invigorating to see my eccentric metaphor stick with people, and the workshop and summit overall were fantastically organized. I feel extremely lucky for having the opportunity to do this, and I look forward to getting everyone on the UMass Lowell campus to start thinking more like birds! It’s a good thing we’re already River Hawks.
To learn more about the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, visit their website here: ges2016.org
To learn more about the University Innovation Fellows program, visit their website here: universityinnovationfellows.org
In preparation for the second session, all the teams were instructed to target their ideal customers and ask them questions about their product. This would give the teams a greater understanding of their target market’s opinions such as whether they would buy the product, how much they would value it, and their ideas on what could improve the product. When the teams presented at the Lowell Innovation Hub, they introduced their findings and how they plan to evolve with their customers’ feedback. For example, the creator of Security Top, a device to prevent someone from drugging one’s drink, found that his customers would not want to be the only one out of their friends using the device. Therefore, it might be a better idea to sell the product to bars and clubs rather than individuals. After the presentations, Paul Schor a lawyer at Gallagher & Cavanaugh LLP, gave a presentation on intellectual property and the use of patents, trademarks, etc. Within the first week of bootcamp the teams have already made great strides and improvements to their business models!
A big thank you to all of this session’s special guests!
On Thursday, June 2nd, DifferenceMaker teams gathered at the Innovation Hub at 110 Canal St to attend the first session of the 2016 Summer Boot Camp. Teams discussed their projects among their peers as well as several mentors, and talked more in depth about how to target customer markets and get a foot in the door in the business world. Teams will continue to gather together with DifferenceMaker staff and mentors throughout the month of June to further discuss their projects!
A big thank you to all of this session’s special guests!