Tables surrounded the perimeter of the BUild Lab, all covered in flyers, stickers and business cards representing different startups. The Lab is filled with excited, curious voices— exactly what the space was made for.
On Feb. 13, the Lab hosted about a dozen different startup teams — some established groups, some still in the works — to give an opportunity for students to network in an event titled “Launch Series: Opposites Attract Showcase.”
Blake Sims, the program director of social innovation at Innovate@BU, said the title of the event and the proximity to Valentine’s Day wasn’t coincidental — the romantic holiday served as the inspiration for the event.
“One of our main goals is to engage students from across the campus and the BU community,” she said. “And we know that the most successful ideas and startups happen when diverse teams work together.”
By diverse teams, Sims means entrepreneurs with different skill sets, different strengths or different experience areas — essentially, she said, left-brain and right-brain. To promote that collaboration, Sims and Rachel Spekman, program director of business ventures at Innovate@BU, organized partner activities for the event.
“We’re all about experiential learning,” Sims said. “We’re not a space where students will be passive learners — we’re an active space.”
The main partner activity was to answer prompts given, such as “invent a new robot” or “think of a use for a potato gun and Play-Doh.” Pairs would draw out their plan on the boards around the room, and ideally, Sims said, learn something from the collaboration.
“It’s a low-touch kind of easy way to network and get to know someone different from them, which is exactly what we’re trying to have happen this space,” Sims said.
As the whiteboards filled up around the room, the environment buzzed with connection. Each team was made up of diverse entrepreneurs, whether the diversity came from different majors or backgrounds.
The creators of the Cannabis Community Care and Research Network, were from vastly different backgrounds: Marion McNabb is an academic and doctor and Randy MacCaffrie is an artist who spent 25 years in the construction industry.
“We’re suggesting that the state adopt an advance research agenda and leverage expertise, from all different universes,” McNabb said. “That’s the virtual piece of it — we want to create a network.”
The team won the BUzz Lab’s Cannabis Start-up Competition with their Cannabis Center of Excellence on Nov. 14, 2017. Their goal is to advance the research of cannabis and how it will impact medical, social and economic outcomes.
Another group, GrowPro, a program that tracks the growth of cannabis plants, was created by a biomedical engineer and a computer science major. The founders of CompanyWide, a hiring platform for construction workers, consider themselves left-brained and right-brained, respectively.
The lab also offered guests an opportunity to get their own ideas into production. Visitors could fill out a sheet where they either defined what their startup idea was and what skills they needed, or they could say what skills they had and what skills they were looking for.
Sims said organizers hoped the event would not only raise students’ awareness of the BUild Lab and its resources but also inspire them to connect with each other.
“Our hope is that we inspire students to get to know one another and learn about some of the ideas that are happening across the campus and the community,” Sims said. “Just connect them to one another and also to learn more about the resources and space that we have here.”
However, Spekman said, they don’t want the lab to turn into a study space.
“We want people working on, actual real life things,” she said. “But that being said, we want to have the space feel as full as possible with students all the time.”
