“Half of Silicon Valley’s startups have at least one foreign-born founder, and immigrants are twice as likely as native-born Americans to start new businesses.” The report’s authors suggest that policy makers should adjust immigration restrictions to encourage entrepreneurship. This report demonstrates an interesting trend that businesses and governments should take into consideration when creating strategies and policies.
Oklahoma City is finding new ways to actively build and support its East Side community.
https://timesofe.com/miracle-in-oklahoma-city/
The NOVA Fellowship at The University of Tulsa (TU) has a mission to build and support the culture of innovation on campus and in our communities. We do this by providing small grants to help innovative student projects, faculty involved in innovative programs, and curating content related to current trends and recent developments in technology and innovation. This content includes topics relevant to the entire campus, including health sciences, economics, arts management, biology, computer science, finance, artificial intelligence (AI), communication, engineering, and global issues. Because NOVA students are studying in a variety of TU majors, our interdisciplinary approach to problem-solving is one of our great strengths.
NOVA also helps provide training to students and faculty in creativity, problem-solving, innovation, and entrepreneurship. We offer training on the TU campus in meetings and workshops, and through an exciting partnership with Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Every year since 2015, NOVA has sent several TU students and faculty to Stanford for 4-5 days of training with experts and interaction with fellow scholars from around the world. The student program is University Innovation Fellows (www.universityinnovationfellows.org) and the program for faculty is the Teaching and Learning Studio Faculty Workshop (http://universityinnovationfellows.org/teachingandlearningstudio/).
In these ways, NOVA exposes TU faculty, staff, and students to many processes and tools used in modern companies related to creativity, problem-solving, innovation, and entrepreneurship. One of these is “design thinking.” It is one of the most well-known problem-solving approaches used around the world today, used to develop concepts for new products, buildings, machines, toys, healthcare services, social enterprises, and more. According to the people who developed this tool, Dave Kelley and Tim Brown of the design firm, IDEO:
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success…. Thinking like a designer can transform the way organizations develop products, services, processes, and strategy. This approach, which IDEO calls design thinking, brings together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. It also allows people who aren’t trained as designers to use creative tools to address a vast range of challenges.” (https://www.ideou.com/pages/design-thinking)
As the innovation field develops, new perspectives are emerging. One promising approach we are beginning to bring into NOVA meetings and workshops is called “systems thinking,” which builds upon the emergent field of complexity research. Systems thinking recognizes the inherent interactivity of the dynamic processes in our world and focuses on problem-solving with that complexity in mind. This approach isn’t completely new, but recent work has made systems thinking more accessible to people interested in solving problems of most any type. For example, Derek Cabrera, Ph.D. (Cornell University) has proposed a useful taxonomy designed to improve systems thinking called DSRP (Distinctions, Systems, Relationships, and Perspectives). He defines it as: “The recursive distinguishing of things and their interrelationships and part-whole organization from various perspectives” (https://blog.cabreraresearch.org/what-is-a-system-what-is-systems-thinking). Elsewhere, DSRP has been described as a particular way to think about problems, and that the use of these four patterns notably improves people’s problem-solving abilities – demonstrated in sessions with Kindergartners all the way to CEOs. The complex, adaptive mental models that are formed during systems thinking attempt to identify the most approachable and simplest explanations for phenomena. In his book with Laura Cabrera, Systems Thinking Made Simple, examples of the simplicity that drives complexity include: the interaction of CMYK colors in our world, the amazing biodiversity derived from combinations of DNA’s core nucleotides ATCG, the fundamentals of martial arts which practitioners use together to improvise during sparring matches, the almost infinite variety of models that can be built with modular Lego blocks, and the billions of possible moves in a chess match with just 6 unique pieces.
We invite you to join us and collaborate as we learn more about effective ways to solve problems that you and others care about in the community, in corporations, and on campus! Please visit www.novafellowship.org or email Dr. Charles M. Wood, Professor of Marketing at TU: charles-wood@utulsa.edu.
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and Start Us Up found in recent polling data that the majority of entrepreneurs are disillusioned with policy makers.
The survey examines the opinions of current entrepreneurs, wantrapreneurs, and general election voters.
https://www.startusupnow.org/entrepreneurship-data
The NOVA Fellowship at The University of Tulsa (TU) has a mission to build and support the culture of innovation on campus and in our communities. We do this by providing small grants to help innovative student projects, faculty involved in innovative programs, and curating content related to current trends and recent developments in technology and innovation. This content includes topics relevant to the entire campus, including health sciences, economics, arts management, biology, computer science, finance, artificial intelligence (AI), communication, engineering, and global issues. Because NOVA students are studying in a variety of TU majors, our interdisciplinary approach to problem-solving is one of our great strengths.
NOVA also helps provide training to students and faculty in creativity, problem-solving, innovation, and entrepreneurship. We offer training on the TU campus in meetings and workshops, and through an exciting partnership with Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Every year since 2015, NOVA has sent several TU students and faculty to Stanford for 4-5 days of training with experts and interaction with fellow scholars from around the world. The student program is University Innovation Fellows (www.universityinnovationfellows.org) and the program for faculty is the Teaching and Learning Studio Faculty Workshop (http://universityinnovationfellows.org/teachingandlearningstudio/).
In these ways, NOVA exposes TU faculty, staff, and students to many processes and tools used in modern companies related to creativity, problem-solving, innovation, and entrepreneurship. One of these is “design thinking.” It is one of the most well-known problem-solving approaches used around the world today, used to develop concepts for new products, education, buildings, machines, toys, healthcare services, social enterprises, and more. According to the people who developed this tool, Dave Kelley and Tim Brown of the design firm, IDEO:
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success…. Thinking like a designer can transform the way organizations develop products, services, processes, and strategy. This approach, which IDEO calls design thinking, brings together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. It also allows people who aren’t trained as designers to use creative tools to address a vast range of challenges.” (https://www.ideou.com/pages/design-thinking)
As the innovation field develops, new perspectives are emerging. One promising approach we are beginning to bring into NOVA meetings and workshops is called “systems thinking,” which builds upon the emergent field of complexity research. Systems thinking recognizes the inherent interactivity of the dynamic processes in our world and focuses on problem-solving with that complexity in mind. This approach isn’t completely new, but recent work has made systems thinking more accessible to people interested in solving problems of most any type. For example, Derek Cabrera, Ph.D. (Cornell University) has proposed a useful taxonomy designed to improve systems thinking called DSRP (Distinctions, Systems, Relationships, and Perspectives). He defines it as: “The recursive distinguishing of things and their interrelationships and part-whole organization from various perspectives” (https://blog.cabreraresearch.org/what-is-a-system-what-is-systems-thinking). Elsewhere, DSRP has been described as a particular way to think about problems, and that the use of these four patterns notably improves people’s problem-solving abilities – demonstrated in sessions with Kindergartners all the way to CEOs. The complex, adaptive mental models that are formed during systems thinking attempt to identify the most approachable and simplest explanations for phenomena. In his book with Laura Cabrera, Systems Thinking Made Simple, examples of the simplicity that drives complexity include: the interaction of CMYK colors in our world, the amazing biodiversity derived from combinations of DNA’s core nucleotides ATCG, the fundamentals of martial arts which practitioners use together to improvise during sparring matches, the almost infinite variety of models that can be built with modular Lego blocks, and the billions of possible moves in a chess match with just 6 unique pieces.
We invite you to join us and collaborate as we learn more about effective ways to solve problems that you and others care about in the community, in corporations, and on campus! Please visit www.novafellowship.org or email Dr. Charles M. Wood, Professor of Marketing at TU: charles-wood@utulsa.edu.
The Love’s Cup is a statewide business plan competition for college students that simulates the real-world process of researching a market, writing a business plan and making a presentation to potential investors. This year, an undergraduate team – Novel Neuro – and a graduate team – DevCycle – from The University of Tulsa’s Collins College of Business took first and third place respectively in their divisions.
Novel Neuro was led by Brittanie Whitney. Her teammates were Faith Nichols, Lena Schmenn and Sophia Zehentner. Professor Chris Wright served as their adviser.
“The Love’s Cup was a great introduction to the world of entrepreneurship,” said Whitney. “The competition and Professor Cornell’s course cover every aspect of start-up ventures, from initial market definition all the way to the exit strategy. With a technical product, we were grateful to have the support of a few Tulsa entrepreneurs and TU community members on our advisory board. My teammates and I had a neuroscience 101 crash-course at our first meeting and haven’t stop learning since! As the team leader, I gained experience in project management and I am now better equipped for my career!”
Novel Neuro is a patent-pending cognitive assessment platform that enhances the confidence of providers in the medical, personal injury and insurance industries by accurately identifying falsified (malingering) claims of brain injury. The technology was developed by TU’s Neuropsychology Laboratory with the assistance of Jordan Hoffmeister, a doctoral candidate in psychology. Through their research, the team discovered that 39% of this kind of injury claims are fake or exaggerated. Neuropsychologists need to be able to detect these false claims, especially in light of the fact that related insurance claims average $100,000 each.
At the Love’s Cup competition, the team sought $1.4 million to build the software’s platform, accelerate brand relationships and continue further research and development. In return, the team offered investors a 30% stake in the company while projecting an 11.32x return on investment in three years.
DevCycle comprised Israyil Alakbarov (team leader) and Jamala Talibova. Their faculty adviser was Professor Claire Cornell.
The focus of this team’s work was innovation within the $14 billion embedded software market. Embedded software is used to control machine interface and is built into a diverse array of products, including mobile phones, robotics, electric cars and medical devices. The market is growing by 10% each year.
The traditional embedded software development process consists of hardware design and software design. The DevCycle technology was developed by TU alumnus Jonathan Torkelson (BEE ’03, MEE ’04). It has improved the embedded software development process by enabling users to develop software, visualize the hardware, test and debug concurrently. This leads to a 50% decrease in development costs and a 40% drop in hardware development time.
“This was a great experience because we were working with a real project, learned a lot from our mentors and improved our business understanding,” said Alakbarov, a business analytics student. “Even though my background is all about business/economics/marketing, it was still very challenging and informative.”
Similar to Novel Neuro, the DevCycle team sought $1.4 million to start building their brand recognition and to continue research and development as they expand into new markets. For a 30% stake in the firm, they projected a 16x return on investment in three years.
Undergraduate and graduate business studies at TU can lead to so many exciting futures. Discover the path that’s ideal for you.
