“Students Today, Innovations Tomorrow.”

Those are the words that read on the powerpoint as students await the day ahead of them. There’s sticky notes, Mr. Sketch scented markers, people chatting amongst themselves, coffee cups, and the crinkle of chip bags, they’re all brainstorming, but for what?

The Innovation Jam organized by the Start Up Hub at Oregon State University was held at Austin Hall on Saturday. 

Mahina Hardin, a third year majoring in design and innovation management, is one of the co-presidents of Start Up Hub at OSU. She says, “we’re hosting the Innovation Jam which is part of the larger statewide Invent Oregon [InventOR] program. In InventOR, they say it’s stewarded by University of Portland’s Center of Entrepreneurship. So we’ve been working closely with their leadership.” 

Hardin is impressed by the turnout this year, “We actually didn’t know how many people were just gonna show up today. Earlier this week, we only had seven registered. And we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, is this event actually going to happen?’ But I think we got to 30 today, and we were aiming for a range of 15 to 45 max, so it’s perfectly in the middle.” 

She says, “this is a regional competition so there’s these Innovation Jams happening all across the state. And one of the organizers just told me this is the best one he’s been to, like, the most organized.” 

Hardin explains how the Start Up Hub was just founded this past fall term, when the Center for Entrepreneurship at OSU in the College of Business was defunded there was no funds for student founders but they still wanted to keep the community. 

She says, “our big goal was to have some sort of pitch competition. But, like, getting funding ended up being more complicated than we thought.” 

She adds how Bret Carpenter, Senior Instructor I and club advisor, came to her and other club members saying that InventOR wanted them to host the event and would give them funding/materials provided, they would just have to plan the event…but they only had four weeks to do it. 

She says, “We really had to pull our group together. But yeah, we ended up just like, going full speed ahead. We said yes. We connected with local organizations who helped us get mentors, split our club team into different roles.” 

The mission for students who participate is to design for impact. Carpenter explains to students that before they make their teams they need to brainstorm, identifying a problem in the world and designing a solution for it. 

The event started at 9 a.m. and ended at 5 p.m., in was in between the hours of 10:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. that the students had to form teams and go through several stages such as empathizing and defining, ideation, prototyping, pitch development, and finally a team presentation that would later be judged. 

Hardin says that, “we’re going to name a first place winner, and they are going to qualify to participate in the InventOR competition. They’re eligible for the 60 program, and then later on this year, they can compete in this InventOR, and there’s like $30,000 worth of prizes.” 

She says, “So after winning this competition, they get a cash prize. And then when they’re part of the InventOR program, it’s like 60 days worth of different workshops. They’re paired with a one-on-one mentor, and they have access to request $2,000 worth of prototyping funds, and that all leads up to the statewide InventOR competition.” 

The timeline of how this works is, the winning team advances to InventOR Bootcamp which lasts from May 1-3 and the InventOR Finals, where they can compete for $30,000 prizes, is on June 26.

Hardin says, “I’m just super happy that people are here … and kind of an experiment, we’ll see how these different stages go and what people end up building.” 

She explains in the past she believes that this event was run on a smaller scale by OSU’s Center of Entrepreneurship, saying it, “was more of like a class pathway.” 

She says, “I think this will be a new wave of making it a bigger event. And the goal of this one is it’s intercollegiate. So there’s a team from Willamette University, and I think one or two community college students, but in future years, we definitely want to do harder outreach to colleges in the region.”

To learn more about the Start Up Hub at OSU, you can follow their instagram here. 

To learn more about InventOR you can visit their website here through this link.