High School Students Become Entrepreneurs at the UK iNET I-Academy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 21, 2012) — High school students from Paul Laurence Dunbar, Henry Clay, Campbell County, Sayre School and Lexington Christian Academy spent an action-packed week at the University of Kentucky iNET I-Academy summer camp learning what it takes to be entrepreneurs.

The I-Academy, sponsored by the Innovation Network for Entrepreneurial Thinking (iNET), gave the students the opportunity to create their own innovations and form a company, go on field trips, meet successful local entrepreneurs, and see some of UK’s most innovative and cutting-edge programs.

“We are very proud of the accomplishments of our first I-Academy graduates,” said Dan O’Hair, dean of UK's College of Communication and Information and chair of the iNET Advisory Board. O’Hair, who recently led a UK team through the NSF Innovation-Corps program to teach researchers to be entrepreneurs, based the I-Academy on the same curriculum.

After learning about entrepreneurship, the students formed their startup companies, and by the end of the first day made elevator pitches on their ideas for new innovations. Each day they worked with coaches and used the business model canvas to validate their value propositions. On Friday, they made their presentations before a panel of judges.

The winning innovation was a social media aggregator named Alligator with a tagline Take a Bite out of Your Social Network. Other innovations included a mobile application called CarConnect, Your Mobile Mechanic, and a floatable, waterproof, device-compatible speaker named Beat Drop.

The inaugural I-Academy was coordinated by iNET Director Deb Weis. Faculty, presenters and coaches included Derek Lane, associate professor in the Department of Communication; Brian Raney, the new iNET entrepreneur-in-residence and founder of Awesome Inc; Engineering Associate Dean Bruce Walcott; Randall Stevens, CEO, Punndit; Alan Stein, president/CEO, SteinGroup; Evan Leach, Crowded; Bill Gregory senior engineer for the UK Center for Visualization & Virtual Environments; Assistant Professor of Architecture Kyle Miller; Big Blue Starters President Wes Brooks; and the Awesome Inc accelerator companies.

The Innovation Network for Entrepreneurial Thinking, iNET (http://inet.uky.edu), is the University of Kentucky’s interdisciplinary academic initiative to develop innovative and entrepreneurial leaders, and it includes a network of students, faculty from colleges across campus, community entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders in Kentucky’s future. The College of Communication and Information hosts iNET. 

For more information about iNET, please contact Deb Weis at (859) 257-8296.