Launching a new product doesn’t happen by chance. It takes a novel idea, someone to design it, scrupulous market research, a winning business plan and capital to fund start-up costs.
Making all of that happen requires both engineering and business acumen and an ability for those involved to communicate and work together.
Teaching students how to do that complicated dance is the reason FGCU’s U.A. Whitaker College of Engineering and Lutgert College of Business joined forces to offer a course through the Institute for Entrepreneurship. The course teams engineering and business students for a semester during which they develop and build a product, conduct research to determine the market for it, then draft and present their marketing plan in hopes of attracting investors. The ultimate goal is to take the idea to production.
The collaboration culminates Saturday, Dec. 5 with the Eagle Biz Awards competition, which is open to the public.
In addition to the guidance of Sandra Kauanui, director of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and chair of the Lutgert Department of Management, and Lisa Zidek, the institute’s deputy director and associate professor of bioengineering, the students receive mentoring from community members with experience in various aspects of business and development.
The mentors, all volunteers, comprise an impressive group. Rodly and Ron Sidman have financial backgrounds and assist the students with their marketing plans and financial statements. Scott Kelly (’14, Bioengineering) was a member of the entrepreneurial team that developed the AquaRamp that won the top prize in the 2013 Florida Venture Forum and now works as an engineer at Ideas2Production, a Naples firm that brings other people’s ideas to market. Amy Ridgeway, (’15, Management), so enjoyed her time in the class she wanted to bring what she’d learned to other students.
The class came about as the result of a discussion between Kauanui and Zidek, who realized that business students didn’t understand the engineering process and engineering students didn’t grasp the business end.
That led to the creation of the course that brings the two disparate groups together for what can be an uncomfortable, but ultimately rewarding, experience.
At first, the two groups can be combative. But eventually, Kauanui says, “they recognize that they need each other.” And that is the point.
“We want kids to understand the process of taking something to market,” she says. “It’s a real-world process.”
On Saturday, 150 students will get yet another taste of the real world as they pitch their ideas in front of judges, family, friends and community members who will vote on which teams most effectively communicate their vision. Winners will receive cash awards.
Teams made preliminary presentations in preparation for the formal competition with Kauanui, Zidek and several mentors providing feedback, coaching them on ways to punch up their presentations, scale back wordy visuals and hone their financials.
Concepts included a tripod that works more easily than current models so videographers miss fewer shots; a base for a beach umbrella that enables easier positioning as the sun moves; and a system that encourages health-care workers to disinfect their hands more frequently in an effort to limit staph infections.
Bioengineering student David Fleck got an up-close view of antibiotic-resistant staph infections when he was hospitalized after a motorcycle crash and his roommate contracted one.
“He was in the hospital four weeks longer than I was and although he recovered, he was never the same,” says Fleck, whose team developed IlluMitize, a hand-sanitizing compliance system for hospitals and other health-care facilities.
The team determined that hospitals spend about $20 billion a year combatting these infections, largely because workers and visitors don’t disinfect their hands sufficiently. Their invention uses a red light, a green light and a container of hand sanitizer on the door frame of each patient’s room. When someone enters the room without sanitizing their hands, the red lights flash. When they use the sanitizer, the green light shines. In this way, patients and other staff members know who has properly sanitized their hands and who hasn’t.
The team projects that hospitals could save money and reduce infection rates by using these devices. They have even found a local hospital chief interested in testing it out.
Mentor Beattie DeLong has been working with the team and sees promise in the device. The Bonita Springs retiree spent his career working on startups and start overs in the health-care industry and has found advising the students both enjoyable and stimulating.
“What they have come up with is a tool to encourage compliance,” he says. “It doesn’t cure anything, but it creates constant awareness of doing something right or wrong.”
DeLong thinks they need to add a data collection feature to show who is complying and who isn’t. If they are able to do that “and can demonstrate that compliance rises, then they’ve got a winner. If they get good data, then I’d love to be involved.”