Students training to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers and businesspeople are coming together to share their ideas for the future through InNUvation, a new club promoting interschool communication and the entrepreneurial spirit.
“Our ultimate objective is to draw in people from every school in Northwestern,” said InNUvation President Cooper Marcus, a first-year Kellogg student. “It’s only by working together with people who have expertise from outside our own schools that we can achieve success making real-world businesses and projects.”
InNUvation drew 100 students to its kick-off meeting in October and currently includes students from most of NU’s graduate and undergraduate schools. The group is seeking members from the Medill School of Journalism.
InNUvation uses its listserv to promote communication among students, has led a lab tour of the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science robotics lab and has held a presentation from a local venture capitalist about being an entrepreneur. The group is planning a tour of the nanotechnology lab and a brown bag lunch series about entrepreneurship and innovation for later this month.
“To educate and inspire — that’s really what we want to do,” said executive board member Jeff Turk, a first-year Kellogg student. “We want to educate the Northwestern community about the resources that are available to them and inspire people to take those ideas and run with it.”
The group also seeks to connect NU entrepreneurs with local support groups and professional contacts they will need to bring their ideas into reality.
“Part of our mission is connecting with people that can make your vision happen, and that includes venture capital firms and patent attorneys and local organizations that support entrepreneurs and start-up businesses,” Marcus said.
Marcus said he hopes InNUvation will create more NU business success stories such as NanoInk, Inc. NanoInk was created through collaboration between a Kellogg student and researchers from NU’s Institute for Nanotechnology, where one student’s business plan was able to use the technology of others and start a successful firm in the Chicago area.
“I think it’s important to note that with NanoInk, no one person involved in that project would be able to do it on their own,” Marcus said. “They needed to work with others and that’s what InNUvation provides, that access to expertise within the Northwestern community.”
With more students coming together to exchange skills and ideas, Turk said he believes more new ventures are on the way.
“We’d like to see great ideas become great businesses,” Turk said. “We’ve had some great examples of that and some other business plans that are just getting ready to get off the ground. We’d like to see more of that and we’d like to see some phenomenal success.”
