| KELLOGG INITIATIVES: Innovation and Entrepreneurship |
WIRED FOR SUCCESS
BUDDING ENTREPRENEURS PLUG INTO NEW FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
In just two years, the Kellogg Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative has augmented the school’s ability to prepare students to found, finance and operate their own businesses post-graduation. Through KIEI, new courses, faculty and alumni events have provided the support those newly minted graduates need to turn ideas into companies. Now comes one more resource: money. A partnership between KIEI, the dean’s office and a student group has created the Kellogg Education Technology Incubator. It provides the Kellogg community — from students to alumni — with a chance to build, test and implement tech-based products designed to enhance education both at Kellogg and throughout the MBA community. The idea for the incubator came about during a pilot program created by Sam Sung ’13 to test the use of tablets to take notes during class. Looking to have a broader impact on Kellogg, a few of the participants, among them Westin Hatch and Elizabeth Bernardi, both ’14, developed the idea for an incubator and — as Sung did with the tablet program — took it to the administration. With the help of Associate Dean of Students and MBA Programs Betsy Ziegler and support from the Dean’s Innovation
Fund, Hatch, Bernardi and the others launched the incubator as a partnership designed to develop new software and products. “It’s that collaboration between faculty, administration and students that makes Kellogg such a special place,” says Hatch, an MMM student and the incubator’s president. During the inaugural, month long pitch competition last fall, 22 student teams representing all Kellogg MBA programs submitted ideas for new products. Of these, eight teams were selected to pitch to a panel of experts that included Kim Vender Moffat ’06, principal at the private equity firm Sterling Partners, Steve Farsht ’98, lecturer and director of TechStars Chicago, and Sunil Chopra, the IBM Professor of Operations Management and Information Systems. Four student teams were then selected to receive more than $50,000 in funding. Kellogg is also providing sponsorship through the dean’s office while Kellogg Information Systems will assist as a sounding board and
BY GLENN JEFFERS
16
KELLOGG SPRING/SUMMER 2014