How Universities Stimulate Innovation (Part 1) - Enthusiasm

Editorial Note: This article is the first part of a Guest Post article written by Sigit Purnomo, Lecturer of the Informatics Engineering Study Program, Atma Jaya University Yogyakarta (UAJY), about his experience of getting a fellowship at Baylor University, Texas - United States.

Writing I at DS previously stated that enthusiasm, idealism and culture are three things that I think are now very important for universities in Indonesia to trigger innovation. This paper will try to provide a concrete example of what Baylor University has done in triggering innovation, the end of which is to build an entrepreneurship/technopreneurship culture at the university. I will divide this article into 3 parts, namely Enthusiasm, Idealism, and Culture. I hope that this article will further clarify how universities in Indonesia can do the same or even better things in the future to trigger innovation in the campus environment.

Spring semester I am very lucky to have the opportunity from the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia to join a fellowship program at Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA. The main purpose of this program is actually to learn about leadership from universities based in the United States of America. The learning outcomes obtained are expected to be used later for the development of my campus later. But on this occasion, I also try to insert another goal, namely to learn how entrepreneurship or technopreneurship culture at Baylor University which in fact is far from Silicon Valley. MESTAKUNG ("the universe supports"), that's what I experienced because Baylor University apparently has programs related to my goals.

Enthusiasm at Baylor Innovation Challenges

I feel how enthusiastic the students and lecturers are here to build a creative and innovative culture through a program called Baylor Innovation Challenges (iNova). This program is organized by a professor at Baylor University's School of Engineering and Computer Science and is still a pilot project. The current objective of the Baylor Innovation Challenges program is only to train students' creativity and innovation in solving various existing problems and has not gone too far to help students build a startup.

At Baylor Innovation Challenges, each week students will gather for 1 hour to practice solving the challenges given in groups through various techniques such as brainstorming, painstorming, ATM (Observe, Imitate, and Modify) and others. After the process, students are asked to make prototypes using the tools and materials that have been provided. At the end of the event, students were asked to present their prototype and then a judging process was carried out through voting to determine the best prototype. Oh, yes, the challenges given are different every week and every week one winner will be selected who will get a prize in the form of candy or cookies. Yup, it's that simple, candy and cookies, but this program also offers a $150 prize for a challenge that is big and takes one time. weeks or more to complete.

During the one month I attended this meeting, the enthusiasm of students and lecturers was very visible. Students are very enthusiastic about participating in each process, both when given time to brainstorm about what their solutions to the challenges are and when making prototype solutions with tools and materials that have been prepared by the professor who becomes his mentor and assistant. All stages from brainstorming to prototype presentations are given a short time constraint so that they are required to think and work quickly and make optimal use of existing resources. During the judging process for the prototype results, students were also very enthusiastic to give each other voice and constructive input for prototypes made by other groups.

As additional information, an example of the challenge given, for example, is how they can deliver bananas from the 2nd floor to the 1st floor quickly and without making bananas "crumpled" by using materials such as glasses or plates made of styrofoam, paper, tape, buckets. small clothes hangers, paper clips, pipettes/straws, cans, and other simple materials. Another challenge is how they make a machine or tool using cardboard, glue, etc. This challenge was inspired by the success of someone making a bicycle out of cardboard that only cost $9 (see photo).

24-Hour Campus Life Atmosphere

Another enthusiasm I see from the atmosphere of campus life which is 24 hours. Quite a number of students are still active on campus at night, be it in the laboratory or discussion room or study room in the library which is open 24 hours. As far as I have observed so far, those who are in the laboratory or discussion room until late at night (note: other than those who are working on thesis/thesis) usually discuss and work on a project together. This can be seen from the various scribbles on the whiteboard that show how they are brainstorming or writing down their project progress. For me, this condition will of course be very helpful to trigger innovation because students will accumulate more and more flight hours so that they can reach 10.000 flight hours.

Conclusion

In order to arouse the enthusiasm of the entire academic community at the university in innovating, in my opinion, there must be a program that is clear and does not need to be grandiose like the Baylor Innovation Challenges. In addition, it must also be supported by supporting facilities, for example at Baylor University the campus can be used for 24 hours because each staff and student has an ID card that can be used to enter and exit these rooms for discussion or work, so there is no need security guard in every building.

Students will also be responsible because every activity in and out of the room will be logged so that if there is something it will be clear who should be responsible. Oh, yes, another example of supporting facilities is the free food and drink (usually pizza and soft drinks) given to students participating in the Baylor Innovation Challenges every week. It turned out to be the same as Indonesia, by providing free food, many people would come.

This guest post article was written by Sigit Purnomo, Lecturer of the Informatics Engineering Study Program, Atma Jaya University Yogyakarta (UAJY). Sigit is also the co-founder of PersonaFlag (location-based social network). You can follow @sigitpurnomo on Twitter or read his blog at sigitpurnomo.com.