AEM 3255 - Creativity Sprint: An Entrepreneurship Hackathon

(crosslisted) ILROB 3255

Fall. 1.5 credits. Student option grading (no audit).

The experiential component of the course/project (the hackathon) is an intensive 36-hour sprint designed so you can put into practice what you are learning in the classroom. To reinforce and anchor your education through experiential learning. The topic of the hackathon is irrelevant to learning and development, it is the underlying principles that can be utilized in a variety of situations, academia, industry, entrepreneurship, etc. The Fall offering of this class is associated with the Food Hackathon, and the Spring offering is associated wiht the Digital Ag Hackathon.

B. Lucas, A. Stuart.

The ability to shepherd an idea from ideation to development to implementation is an essential skill in today’s business environment for entrepreneurs, innovators, and organizational change agents. To this end, this course aims to develop students’ abilities to identify problems and generate solutions to real world business and societal challenges. The course focuses on problem identification (understanding the core elements of a presenting problem), idea generation (developing solutions to those problems), and implementation (putting those solutions into practice). The course includes lecture-based content and activities around these topics and features participation in a weekend-long hackathon event that serves as a practicum experience where students will generate, develop, and pitch an idea related to a societal or business challenge.

Outcome 1: Identify real problems (a.k.a., pain points).

Outcome 2: Effectively ideate creative solutions, including thinking through the idea’s feasability, viability, and novelty.

Outcome 3: Recognize how technologies and solutions from one industry can be adapted to solve teh pain points of another industry.