Innovation, entrepreneurship & academics
If the future of higher education were up to Garret Westlake, it would be about “taking risks, not tests.” Happily, in his position as Executive Director of the VCU da Vinci Center for Innovation, Westlake stands a good chance of making that happen.
Case in point: A da Vinci student recently approached Westlake with an idea for an independent study project involving creating an app and getting it on app stores. Mid-semester Apple suddenly changed its system and the student’s app was denied. They were crushed. Westlake explained that failing early is a gift, it pushes you to keep iterating and pivoting.
“There is no substitute for introducing students to the real world. They need to learn to work with everyone, not be sheltered in a classroom. It’s all about the risks you take and the support you get along the way.”
Design Thinking
This insistence on real-world experience was Westlake’s theme at a recent Encorepreneur virtual breakfast meeting on Zoom. Story after story bore him out. There was the da Vinci Center’s success in producing masks when VCU Health called in March 2020 to report a potential shortage. “Entrepreneurs fall in love with problems, not solutions,” said Westlake. “They can’t help it.” In the instance of the masks, the Center employed “design thinking” to step back from the initial ask and come up with an innovative answer: clean and repurpose the existing masks.
Keys to the Future
At VCU, the da Vinci Center is a collaboration of VCU’s School of Arts, Business, the Colleges of Engineering and Humanities and Sciences and VCU Health. Together they are focused on improving today’s academic experience. “To do this, we’ve got to do better at creating programs that meet the needs of our end users.” How? Westlake is on it. “Optimize and innovate. Look beyond those traditionally served. Learn from prototypes and scale the things that are proven to work.” The da Vinci Center’s Master of Product Innovation is one example where Westlake stresses the importance of cross-disciplinary degree programs that empower students with cutting edge tools and pair them with real world partners and projects. Applications are open for Summer and Fall.
Read the full article from VCU Business >>
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