Innovation Club was founded with the goal in mind to develop a large number of ideas in a small period of time.  We also strive to have informative lectures at every weekly meeting.  To date, we have had lectures on the engineering design process, Kelly Johnson's 14 rules and practices, biomimicry, and Intellectual Property/the patent process. 

The original idea was a 3-week rapid-prototyping process, but due to troubles with fundraising, we cut back to a 6-week rapid-prototyping process. On day one, we brainstorm a long list of problems in the world.  Then we rank the problems in the world we would most like to take on, and break into a few teams based on who ranked what.  Each team then brainstorms a list of possible solutions to their problem.  Then they rank their possible solutions, and they tackle the one that they are most interested in doing. 

For instance, a problem in the world is that "I can't drink my coffee immediately after I get it because it's too hot."  A few solutions to that are: build a refrigeration unit for my cup, redesign my cup so it acts as a heat-sink, put ice cubes in my coffee, propose legislation to serve coffee in a certain temperature range, etc. 

The teams then exchange contact information and meet up separately over the course of the week to develop their project idea and build an itemized budget by the end of the first three weeks.  Then we find a sponsor for the project and build it for the next three weeks.  Not all projects require sponsors. 

MISSION STATEMENT

Designers, thinkers, and researchers from a variety of fields come together in order to foster entrepreneurship and innovation.  Through structured brainstorming, informative lectures, and idea development, this organization encourages the advancement of business networking skills and expansion of partnership opportunities.

The project documentation template is to be filled out by each team as they complete their project.  Right click the link and hit save link as. Then open the file in Microsoft Word and you can edit it easily. 

Contact information:

Please contact us if you are interested in learning more:

Charles Haley: cshaley@smu.edu

Keith Adler: kadler@smu.edu