Graduate Teams Showcase Business Ideas

At NC State, entrepreneurship is a part of our culture. A number of programs and events on our campus focus on helping our students learn how to take a business concept from the drawing board to the board room.

On December 13, 10 teams of graduate students from multiple disciplines gathered to showcase 10 weeks of work they put into developing new, innovative products through the Product Innovation Lab, a course offered by Poole College of Management that challenges students to bring an actual product or service to market. The products ranged from devices for health care, games, sporting equipment to even apps for parking space sharing.

The teams showed off their products to more than 150 people who then voted for their favorite idea by “investing” with fake dollars given to them at the beginning of the night. Industry leaders were also placed among the audience members to judge the teams on their work.

The winning teams developed an app for sharing privately owned parking spaces and a device to improve bicycling safety.

“Dropark” is an app that allows drivers to search for available short-term parking spaces, and pay the owner a fee. Team members are Penghui Jiang, industrial design; Mahdi Inaya, electrical and computer engineering; Maggi DeMillion and Amit Rotem, business administration.

“Tueri” is a device that improves biking safety by helping cyclists avoid possible collisions, even from vehicles approaching, even from behind. Team members are George Pinther, Megan Frank and David Majeski, business administration; Brian Himelright, industrial design; Shadaab Khan and Nishad Sabnis, electrical and computer engineering; and Kevin Ullatuthodi, industrial and systems engineering.

Read more about the featured products.

​This event made possible with support from Venture Well,  HQ Raleigh, and NC RIoT.

This post was originally published in The Graduate School News.