School District of New Berlin and Lubar Entrepreneurship Center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) will partner to facilitate a series of Pop Ups on Lean Startup methodology in the Advanced Innovation and Design (iAID) Program. The objective of these Pop Ups is to expose students to creative and entrepreneurial mindsets while complimenting iAID curriculum. Students will be encouraged to follow their curiosity and lead their learning by doing hands-on “experiments” in an open and safe environment. The proposed workshops offer experiential learning opportunities that will expose students to various tools that can be used in iAID and beyond classroom walls.
ENGAGING STUDENTS THROUGH POP UPS
Pop Up #1: Business Model Canvas – the framework to help think through preliminary business concepts and assumptions.
Pop Up #2: Customer Discovery – a process of testing assumptions and hypotheses through learning from customers.
Pop Up #3: Pitching – communicating an innovative business product or a concept in an effective way by leveraging storytelling techniques.
PROGRAM ELEMENTS BUILT ON BEST PRACTICES
As an active participant and contributor to the National Innovation Network (NIN), a grantee/participant of the NSF-funded National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter) at Stanford University and partner with VentureWell, UWM has developed programming informed by the state-of-the-art practices and educational research. Two examples of these core programming elements include:
- Design Thinking – a structured user-centered approach to problem-solving through deep exploration of the problem space, and quick prototyping and testing in the solution space; and
- Lean Startup – a hypothesis-driven approach to developing a business model through gaining insights from customers, reflecting and adapting the model using business model canvas.
UWM will tailor these core programming elements for New Berlin’s iAID Program.