innovation.RIT.edu

All of the freshmen in the Saunders College of Business at RIT participate in a year-long course sequence entitled “Business 1-2-3.” The sequence takes them through the entire innovation process from idea generation to business plan development to commercialization.

The Business 1 course is focused on ideas and creativity and this week the students are in the Innovation Center pitching their ideas to a panel of Venture Capitalists (well, faculty and staff posing as VCs). The students did a great job in identifying “problems” on campus and are making the first steps toward flipping those problems into business opportunities.

What is so exciting here is that most of the teams are proposing projects that they can’t implement without the help of the RIT community. There are many proposals for software, even more for phone apps (these kids are mobile!), and a few projects based on hardware, furniture, and pedal power. What’s even more exciting is that, through this process, several of the teams are discovering existing RIT student projects, such as Bookmaid, that are ripe for further development. This is how the innovation initiative is supposed to work, right?

If you’d like to browse some brief descriptions of the team projects, check out our Gallery.  It’s still under development but chock full of good stuff already. And if you’d like to see some more pictures of the presentations, they are right here.

Last night we had a diverse crowd show up in the Innovation Center for a workshop on Human Centered Design. Students and staff came out from business, programming, engineering, design, and art. And man, did they do some good work!

The event started off with a brief talk from Professor Xanthe Matychak, Saunders College of Business, on the interplay between the fields of design, technology, and business. Then Matychak moved in to focus on the the role that designers play. Following the talk, the attendees were put to work on framing a problem-space–Reading Before and After the Internet– in terms of human experience. Sounds geeky, but the work spawned some pretty interesting discussion and yielded unique insights. Bingo.

Be sure to let us know what kinds of workshops you are interested in for future. The only criteria is that the topic have cross-disciplinary appeal. Additionally, if you are looking for courses that go deep into this type of process, be sure to check out our courses page. Open to all, world-changers preferred.

Hey hey. Check out our courses page for I-center courses. Brief descriptions are pasted in below.

Innovation and Invention
Learn what can’t be taught by doing what no one has done.
Jon.Schull@rit.edu
WINTER. Mondays 4pm-8pm
course # 4080-555 (undergrad) and 4085-855 (grad)

Design, Innovation, and Problem Solving
Learn and practice product/service development techniques from Silicon Valley:
Integrate Business, Design, and Technology, Generate Hundreds of Creative Ideas, Empathize with End-Users, Frame and Re-frame Problem-Spaces, Build and Test Prototypes, Iterate toward Creative Solutions, Work with a Diverse Team
Xanthe.Matychak@rit.edu
WINTER. Tuesday/Thursday 8am-10am
course # 0102-554

Register here.

It doesn’t take a lot to get started doing things at the innovation center.  Those who had never been inside the building until today got their first look inside.  As First Year Enrichment classes took an introductory tour, an eager group of first year students tried their hands at improving a project already in progress.

The “flexcycle,” a tricycle made out of flexible materials, is a recumbent tricycle design chassis made of flexible components.  A radical concept, this invention shares more design principles with sail boats and hunting bows that with conventional cars or bikes.

The project has turned into an attractive one.  A team of students has begun meeting regularly to make adjustments and try new strategies with the structure.  They meet weekly, and are open to new members with new ideas.  To participate in the innovation and invention process, contact Jon Schull at jschull@gmail.com

If you were one of the hundreds present for the opening gala of the Innovation Center, then you mostly likely participated in Xanthe Matychak’s workshop. The activity invited students, staff, and faculty to get involved planning ideas to showcase at the coming innovation festival. By encouraging wild ideas, building on the ideas of others and suspending judgment*, the question of “what could be done?” was given 1,000 resounding answers. To view and comment on the top five ideas from each group, please check out the Picasa Web Gallery that participants directly uploaded to from their cell phones.

The collaborative event followed speeches by Dr. Ian Gatley, President Destler, and RIT graduate and Digsby creator Steve Shapiro.  In his speech, Shapiro gave words of encouragement to RIT students who may be feeling homesick or introverted while adjusting to the campus. As a testament to his experience at RIT, he says he would not have achieved his success without leaving his computer.  Joining a fraternity, clubs, and eventually doing the type of work that is possible in the center led his career as a developer and entrepreneur.

*idea generating principles from IDEO

The makers of RIT have a new home: the innovation center at RIT.  MAKE club is a collection of individuals with ideas who have come together out of compulsive desire to create.  The RIT MAKE club takes particular inspiration from Make zine, a Do it yourself approach to electronics, crafts, computers, metalworking, and consumer products.  The philosophy behind this is taking something you have an understanding of and using it in a way that no one has used it for.  An example of this would be a three string electric guitar made with pieces of scrap wood.  The members of the club discuss ideas they have towards improving or inventing technologies through informal discussion that lead towards group collaboration.

For discussion at their most recent meeting on September 19, club members proposed projects and workshops that they would like to sponsor and collaborate on for the coming year.  One of the more ambitious ideas (a refrigerator that could analyze caloric information of the food inside and organize the ingredients into healthy recipes) came from Mike Finegan, a computer science grad student.  While discussing what kinds of people the MAKE club attracts, he explained, “What MAKE club is doing is bringing together the minds who want to work.  The people who are here want to be here, they want to do something exciting, something new.  That general enthusiasm and passion is what makes the difference.”

Said club treasurer Tim Garvin; “We don’t want to be intimidating, we just want to be a bunch of guys [and girls] getting together to make stuff, who are interested in learning how to make stuff.  Right now at RIT, there’s a lot of cool stuff going on, but a lot of that stuff is hiding off to the side, and you really have to know what your doing…we want to be a place for anyone to come and learn to build anything they want.  And if people come here and don’t know what they want to build, that’s great too, because you can help other people.”

For more information about the MAKE club, anyone is invited to attend their meetings at 7pm at the Innovation Center, or check them out online at their Google Group.

Grassroots learning is learning by doing it yourself, with the materials you have at hand.  As a teacher in Belize, RIT Graphic Design graduate student Tim O’Malley had immediate experience in this. “I really got interested in grassroots start-ups, because in Belize, everything is a start-up.”

O’Malley worked on several projects including organizing and working as an Art Director for Stonetree Records and Cumbancha World Music. Working on designing the website, the album, promotions, and brand identity, O’Malley had a central hand in giving a visual face to under appreciated music in the Garifuna culture, a linguistic network of people descended from Carib, Arawak and African ancestors.  His work brought him to team up with local legend Andy Palacio as he sought to record the Garifuna musical legacy.  The fruits of their labor was Wátina, ranked as #1 in Amazon.com’s list of all time greatest world music albums.

So what brought O’Malley to RIT?  As he pursues his graduate studies, O’Malley hopes to bring to life what the Innovation Center has to offer for the student body.  “I’m interested in people doing things because there is a need for it, not just for profit,” explained O’ Malley.  “I like encouraging collaboration, even where there is no system in place.”

One of O’Malley’s most recognizable contributions to the center has been the Idea Boards, a way of sharing ideas visually among students passing through the center. Come in and check it out!

The northwest side of Rochester might be the last place one would expect to find solar panels on a house.  But in five months, there will be a home on Whitney St. with not only solar panels on the roof, but a rear air-lock entryway to maintain heat, southern facing windows to bring in natural light, and a system of switchable electric sockets.  You can check out a complete list of design improvements here.

The members of RIT Habitat for Humanity and Engineers for a Sustainable World were challenged by RIT President Dr. Bill Destler to build a sustainable house from the ground up.  The clubs are working in tandem to build a home with and for a family in the JOSANA neighborhood of Rochester.  Flower City Habitat for Humanity and architect Todd Marsh partnered with the students to create the floorplans in accord with their recommendations.

The students involved are responsible for raising the estimated $75,000 necessary to complete the project.  The benefits of these green technologies are huge..  Not only are they better for the environment, but they will lower utility costs for the family (High RG&E bills typically burden low-income families).

“Our goal is to make green affordable, so it can be replicated in the future,” explained Kaity Werner, one of the student leaders of the coalition.  She says the endeavor would not have been possible without many different talents: “It’s a very multi-disciplinary project.”

April Randall, who is working on and will eventually live in the Habitat house, was on hand at Habitat for Humanity’s first meeting.  “You guys are making a life-changing impact. Starting with me, with one street, to one neighbor, to one neighborhood,” she reflected, “I thank you for your interest, your compassion and that most precious gift in life, your time.”

The RIT community has a real chance to change the way people live in the downtown area, and forge a meaningful relationship with our home community.

The tentative groundbreaking date is October 23^rd, and the RIT community is invited to participate in the first wall-raising expected in November.  Interested students can contact the student coordinators at RITHFH@gmail.com

One laptop per child.  That’s the dream envisioned by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, the creator of the One Laptop per Child foundation, and the XO laptop.  The dream is also shared by Stephen Jacobs, instructor of the One Laptop per Child Class (OLPC) at RIT.

“The whole idea of this class is to give students who want to give back to developing nations a chance to do so,” says Jacobs.  The class (course 4080-590) is now in its second year  and is a place where any major at RIT can contribute.  Offering an un-paid co-op possibility, the OLPC class allows students to work on the open source software that the computers run on, as well as create content for children’s educational tools.

Wes Dillingham, a fifth year Information Technology major, participated in the co-op program this summer as part of a continuing interest in open source technology.  “I wanted to do something that was meaningful with my IT degree.”

Education is the first priority when designing software for these laptops. The devices are given to students in developing nations so they can be exposed to the inter-connected technological world.  Built to be water, dirt, and dust-proof, the $200 learning machines are designed to run children’s educational software and connect to the internet.  In fact, the wireless range of the laptops is larger than most consumer models, and the reflective dual-mode LCD screen can be viewed in direct sunlight.

A strong community of people with the passion to improve the hardware, software, and content of the devices has grown through the OLPC Wiki right here in Rochester.  The Rochester connection to the class is the OLPC Users Group, led by Frederick Grose and Karlie Robinson, both of whom have been instrumental in the development and delivery of the course and the coops.  It was the ties Robinson had to the Open Source community as owner of On-Disk.com that initiated the program’s connections to Red Hat, Fedora (who donated 25 OLPC’s to Jacob’s  lab for Technological Literacy) and Sugar Labs (the OLPC spin-off responsible for the growth and development of the Sugar operating system). Grosse and Jacobs began working on OLPC related efforts two years ago and it was Grosse who supervised the Co-Ops and was the primary organizer of a week –long trip to Boston to meet others in the OLPC, Sugar and Open Source communities.

Once again, the class is open to everyone.  Artists and musicians are needed to create media for children’s games.  Communications students are needed to enrich the software with their own contributions. Explained Jacobs: “We specialize in two different concepts outside the umbrella of traditional curriculum: creative commons licensing, and the process of development for open source software.”

For more information, please contact Stephen Jacobs at sj@mail.rit.edu.

The Innovation Center is always looking for new ideas.  Be they ideas for events to host at the center, projects to be done by students, or even the newest way to peel oranges, we’d like you to feel free to share them.  This blog can be used as an online way of doing so, but it should be restated that you are always welcome to bring your ideas to the physical Innovation Center, open 24 hours.