Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

From the University of San Diego:

The Brink Small Business Development Center (SBDC), a community-facing innovation center housed at the University of San Diego, has celebrated its 20^th cohort of the Lean Essential Sprint (LES) program.

Launched in 2020, this transformative nine-week course has rapidly become a cornerstone of innovation and start-up support in the region. The celebration, marked by a Demo Day showcasing the latest crop of emerging ventures, highlighted the program’s substantial impact on local entrepreneurship.

The LES program, designed to equip start-ups with critical skills and knowledge, guides participants through the essentials of lean start-up methodology. By emphasizing rapid experimentation, customer feedback, and iterative design, LES aims to help entrepreneurs refine their ideas and scale their businesses effectively.

From Princeton University:

Building on a decade of rapid growth in innovation and entrepreneurship, Princeton University has launched the Office of Innovation, a bold step to facilitate, cultivate and elevate the University’s expanding innovation pursuits.

The office will be a key resource for faculty, researchers, and entrepreneurs who want to be involved in building a collaborative ecosystem that will spur real progress on society’s most pressing challenges and create pathways for brilliant ideas to find their place in the world to change lives.

Craig B. Arnold, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Vice Dean for Innovation, has been named Princeton’s first University Innovation Officer and heads the new office.

“This new office is founded on the principle that innovation at Princeton should be integral, inclusive and impactful, with a commitment to elevating innovation across all fields to match Princeton’s renowned excellence in teaching and fundamental research,” said Arnold, an inventor with 17 granted patents and founder of three companies based on his Princeton research. “Our mission is clear: we seek to nurture and support an environment where bold ideas take root, interdisciplinary collaboration thrives and new ways of thinking challenge established norms.

From the Georgia Institute of Technology: 

From Purdue University:

Teams of Purdue University students won a combined $5,500 in prizes during the finals of the Moonshot Pitch Challenge, a semiannual, ideation-focused competition organized by the Purdue Innovates Incubator.

“The Moonshot Pitch Challenge recognizes audacious solutions and the people ideating them,” said Doug Applegate, Incubator Associate Director. “Purdue University students are actively analyzing worldwide challenges and diligently working on the giant leaps to address them.”

Active Purdue undergraduate and graduate students across all colleges were eligible to compete. Close to 60 teams submitted a video to explain the problem they were addressing and propose their solution. Solutions were grouped into one of three categories:

• Moonshot: Ideas primarily focused on solving a seemingly impossible problem;
• Orbit: Ideas primarily focused on business-to-business solutions; or
• Earth: Ideas primarily focused on addressing socioeconomic needs and challenges.

From the New Jersey Institute of Technology:

The Center for Student Entrepreneurship, newly created at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), will centralize and grow the university’s resources that expose students to the spirit and skills necessary to think in an innovative mindset.

Other entrepreneurship resources at NJIT also welcome undergraduates, but until now these students have not had a center focused solely on them, explained Kathy Naasz, Executive Director of Student Entrepreneurship. She is also a research professor in NJIT’s Martin Tuchman School of Management.

“We have a strong foundation already at NJIT. We’re ranked top 50 in student entrepreneurship. And we’re taking it and amplifying it, to ignite the entrepreneurial spirit earlier. Our mission is to radically increase access to and participation in entrepreneurial efforts and learning for all NJIT students,” Naasz said.

“The Center for Student Entrepreneurship embodies NJIT’s commitment to providing students with hands-on, real-world experiences,” said John Pelesko, University Provost. “We are empowering the next generation to turn their ideas into impactful ventures and to apply entrepreneurial skills to their careers. Our students will leave NJIT ready not just to participate in the economy, but to shape its future.”

NJIT’s existing entrepreneurship Initiatives include the Center for Translational Research, emphasizing commercialization of faculty intellectual property; Innovation Corps, based around research funding from the National Science Foundation that’s usually at the graduate student level; New Jersey Innovation Acceleration Center, focused on training anyone in the North Jersey region; Paul Profeta Community Entrepreneurship Program, delivering workshops to underserved business founders in Newark; and Venture Studio, formerly known as Venturelink, providing existing startup companies with incubation resources from NJIT’s New Jersey Innovation Institute.

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