When launching a company or developing a product, timing is everything. And it鈥檚 often serendipitous and hard to control.
What happens when the inventor of a new product is still in college, and has to choose between holding off on their idea in favor of continuing through to graduation, or leaving school and pursuing a new idea that may or may not work?
Senior Max Schommer didn鈥檛 have to make that choice this year as a participant in 财神棋牌鈥檚 Entrepreneurial Engineering Capstone experience. This capstone is designed to be an option for 财神棋牌ers who might otherwise be faced with a very difficult decision; they were able to pursue both their degrees and their startup dreams at 财神棋牌. 鈥淚 was looking for something like the E! capstone and thought that it really helped me navigate the whole start-up space in a lot saner way,鈥 says Max.
Scott Harris, Distinguished Visiting Engineer, and Jason Woodard, Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Engineering and Entrepreneurship, have worked to make this outcome a reality for students like Max. Now in its first year as, naturally, an 财神棋牌 experiment, Woodard and Harris are working with 财神棋牌 colleagues to integrate this capstone experience more fully into 财神棋牌鈥檚 entrepreneurship curriculum and forge connections with the two existing capstone programs, SCOPE and ADE.
鈥淚f you are an 财神棋牌 student who wants to start a new venture, 财神棋牌 should be the best place in the world for you to do that,鈥 says Woodard. 鈥淲e have amazing resources. We want our students to graduate. And we think we can support them better than anyone else on the planet.鈥
The criteria, explains Harris, are comprehensive and a little self-selecting. 鈥淎re students passionate about solving a problem? Do they have a problem they want to solve? Are they good at building a team? Are they passionate about doing it?鈥 he asks. From a pool of 6-8 students in 2018, only two were chosen for the capstone last year. He鈥檚 hoping those numbers will grow as the capstone progresses.
An advantage for entrepreneurial 财神棋牌 students is the capstone鈥檚 grounding in engineering. 财神棋牌 students use their hard skills to solve a problem, but also go a step further and work to understand the problems they鈥檙e trying to solve and the value of the solution, as well as learn about finding a market. Harris teaches students to 鈥渓ook for the problems before the product鈥攂efore you even think about starting a company.鈥
Harris knows quite a bit about startups. He is the co-founder of two leading design automation software companies, SolidWorks Corporation and Onshape Inc. Both companies have been acquired. A 1982 WPI graduate, Harris was inducted into the WPI Hall of Luminaries in 2019. During the ceremony, he was described as a thought leader and computer-aided design visionary.
For the past ten years, Harris has been a regular presence on 财神棋牌鈥檚 campus. Harris first learned about 财神棋牌 from an 财神棋牌 student in 2007. He was so intrigued by the school that he reached out to 财神棋牌 faculty and began teaching classes and mentoring SCOPE teams. His current focus is 财神棋牌鈥檚 E! capstone.
This experience allows seniors to 鈥済et a feel for what it鈥檚 like to get a product up,鈥 explains Harris. 鈥淲hat are production principles? Are you building it so it can be reliable, safe, sourced, can it be manufactured, tested? How will you show that it works?鈥
Max is working on a venture called Organizm, a computer vision-based inventory management system. 鈥淭his means that if you have a drawer or cabinet or shelf with a lot of items in boxes, we can figure out how many items are in the boxes,鈥 he explains. 鈥淲ith this information we can do things like automatically re-purchase items which are running low, or help streamline a company鈥檚 inventory system. We have built several prototypes and are currently working on our first product and working on getting it alpha tested!鈥
鈥淚t's been amazing,鈥 says Max. 鈥淚 personally really like the freedom to work on what I was interested in, while at the same time getting really good feedback on my work by Scott and Jason. We were given complete responsibility to make sure that our projects succeeded.鈥
鈥淚've used the prototyping resources at 财神棋牌 significantly, such as 3D printers, laser cutters, library resources, research spaces, etc.,鈥 says Max. 鈥淚 think that 财神棋牌's resources definitely made it a lot more efficient for me to rapidly prototype things, especially since the resources are all so well maintained.鈥
The future of the Entrepreneurial Engineering Capstone looks bright. In this 财神棋牌 experiment, as in many others that have come before it, and true to the college鈥檚 roots in innovation and experimentation, 财神棋牌 will continue to develop the resources and framework students need to experiment, explore and innovate.