Invention to Venture Workshop pushes innovation

Aspiring student, faculty and community entrepreneurs converged at the Fairwinds Alumni Center Friday to learn about available resources, services, opportunities and more at the Invention to Venture Workshop.

Hosted by UCF's Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, I2V focused on innovation and technology-based products and businesses.

The event featured workshops on technology entrepreneurship, legal issues, marketing and sales, and financing, in addition to the keynote speech from the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council and author of the book Never Get a "Real" Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business and Not Go Broke, Scott Gerber.

"I'm very excited that organizations like this and UCF understand that academia has to play a role in the entrepreneurial revolution of our youth," Gerber said. "Because there are far too many universities across the country that think the only way to validate your diploma is by going through the traditional academic cycle. It's refreshing to see organizations that realize that's not the only way forward."

Gerber travels the country promoting entrepreneurship to students and young professionals in support of Startup America Partnership, an initiative from President Barack Obama focused on supporting entrepreneurs. Before Gerber spoke Friday, Kirstie Chadwick, Managing Partner of Growth Innovators, announced the formation of Startup Florida, an offshoot of the national program.

"Obama, back in January, put down a challenge, or a mandate, stating that small business and startups and high growth early-stage companies for 30 or 40 years now have created all net new jobs in the United States," Chadwick said. "As a country, we need to be celebrating entrepreneurship and make sure that we're putting programs and infrastructure in place to help those high growth early-stage companies be successful so that we can create the jobs that we need to create right now in our economy."

She described the national and state organizations as independent, grassroots programs led by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs.

Another announcement introduced KnightLaunch, a new web-based resource for young entrepreneurs at UCF.

"It allows people to assess their ideas using an online survey format," said Dr. Cameron Ford, founding director of CEI. "They can also share their ideas with other people and get feedback from others."

Ford said KnightLaunch complements existing CEI programs aimed at helping students explore and develop entrepreneurial ventures, including academic courses, a speaker series, campus competitions and coaching services.

"UCF is somewhat unique in that we are the only research university in one of the top 20 largest markets in the country," Ford said. "We are really one of the most important sources for innovation and knowledge-based business ideas in the region. And we want to do everything we can to help make it easier for people to transfer innovations and insights they get while they're here in the academic community and realize those out through this community."

One of the innovative entrepreneurs highlighted was UCF senior finance major Ace Glenn. Collaborating with other students, Glenn developed CourseMob, a mobile study guide for college students.

"In a nutshell, CourseMob is a service that automatically sends review items for upcoming exams to students' cell phones throughout their normal day so that they don't have to worry about waiting to the last second to cram for exams," Glenn said.

Glenn's original concept started out as an interactive study guide that taught concepts with pictures instead of words. He came up with the idea while cramming for an exam at 3 a.m.

"I continually found myself in that scenario, where I was waiting until the last second to study for exams," he said. "So we decided to build products that solved that problem."

His initial concept propelled him to win the 2011 Joust Business Plan competition hosted by CEI and led to the development of CourseMob. This semester, the mobile app was available as a pilot for four courses at UCF. For the spring semester, Glenn said that number will increase to 25 or 30 courses.

"It's something that's certainly missing right now," Glenn said. "Spaced repetition learning, the idea of learning in small increments over an extended period of time, has been proven in a lot of studies to be the most effective way of retaining information, but it's never been practical to use. So what we're hoping is that CourseMob eventually becomes something that a student can't live without."