Tepper School of Business
Fall 2009 newsletter
Graduate Students Kick Off 2009 Academic Year with the James R. Swartz Entrepreneurship Boot Camp
Each summer the Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship sponsors and runs the-one-of-a-kind, sold-out James R. Swartz Entrepreneurship Boot Camp. Graduate students from across campus have a unique opportunity to kick off the school year with a broad introduction and immersion into entrepreneurship and innovation at Carnegie Mellon University.
“We started the Boot Camp in 2008 to inspire students to jump-start their entrepreneurial interests while attending Carnegie Mellon,” said Mike Partsch (GSIA ’98), founder & CEO of AcceleMed Management, Inc. and Boot Camp instructor. “Our objective is to provide students with the tools and techniques required to formulate and articulate a new venture or product, and also to ensure that from day one they have the resources and connections required to make their vision a reality.”
Participants are grouped into small teams to work on developing a business idea during the Boot Camp, and on the final day each team competes in a $500 elevator “Idea Pitch” competition. This year the first-place prize in the “Idea Pitch” competition went to Ron Chow, Heather Marie Unruh and Duosi Xu (all 2011 Tepper MBA students) for “Hands Free Hotel Key.”
This year’s participants included Mike Stubler of Draper Triangle Ventures; Steve Fleck (MBA ’04) of ClearCount Medical Solutions, Inc.; Andy Hannah of Plextronics, Inc.; Jeff Mullen (MBA ’09) of Dynamics, LLC; Eric Boduch (BS ’96) of SMaSh Technologies; Eric Koger (BA ’06, MBA ’07) of ModCloth.com; Dave Mawhinney (MSIA ’90) of mSpoke, Inc. and Raji Sankar (MBA ’00) of Wholesome Burger.
Jones Center Expands Interdisciplinary Efforts Through 2009 Designing a Business Summit
New robotics technologies are proliferating, providing entrepreneurs and innovators with an increasing number of new opportunities to bring to market. The Tepper School approach to innovation tries to understand market need first and then finds the right technology to solve the problem or address the opportunity. The 2009 "Designing a Business Summit: Designing Market-Driven Robotics Solutions in Healthcare" (hosted by the Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship and sponsored by The Technology Collaborative) focused on how robotics can bring about disruptive business innovations in the healthcare sector.
Disruptive innovations transform or create a market by integrating a technology with a strategy or business model to disrupt the status quo. Robotics innovations that incorporate the ability to sense, provide intelligent decision-making and act autonomously can improve the productivity, safety, speed and efficiency of many activities in the healthcare sector.
In a plenary address to kick off the summit Dr. Arthur A. Boni stated that “innovation can lead to safer, improved outcomes at a lower level of cost. While most of the focus has historically been on treatment of acute care as delivered in the surgical suite or ER, there is considerable space for innovation in wellness and diseases like diabetes, obesity and heart disease. We should also look at developing new, innovative networks that link acute-care facilities with the community across the healthcare spectrum of patients, providers and payers.”
This cross-disciplinary summit brought together experts in healthcare, robotics technology and business development. Industry experts such as Sean McDonald (current CEO of Precision Therapeutics, Inc. and founder and CEO of Automated Healthcare, Inc. prior to its acquisition by McKesson) provided an overview of the robotics sector, while Carnegie Mellon professors Arthur A. Boni (entrepreneurship), Laurie Weingart (organizational behavior) and Shelley Evenson (design) highlighted the interdisciplinary approach entrepreneurs must take when attempting to turn a disruptive technology into a profitable venture. Dr. Howie Choset (CMU Robotics Institute) and Dr. Marco Zenati (UPMC Healthcare System), founders of CardioRobotics, Inc. (which just closed an investment round of over $11M to commercialize a new robotics platform for heart surgeries) participated in a panel discussion with Boni.
Throughout the one-day summit attendees worked in small groups led by design facilitators from Maya Designs and Gravity Tank to develop a robotic solution that addressed an immediate need in the healthcare field. Each cross-disciplinary team consisting of healthcare experts, business development specialists and entrepreneurs illustrated how to focus on the market viability of a product or service while understanding market need. A cross-disciplinary team can efficiently bring different perspectives together to develop viable, market-driven solutions.
“You can’t just put a group of experts from different fields in a room together and expect them to innovate,” says Dr. Laurie R. Weingart, an expert on interdisciplinary teams. “The facilitators were expressly brought in to provide structure and design-thinking to a process that allowed team members to tap into the diverse expertise at the table without being hindered by potentially conflicting problem frames or distinct knowledge bases that might be difficult to bridge.”
Together more than thirty participants identified market opportunities, co-discovered feasible robotic applications for disruptive innovations in the healthcare field and presented these applications at the summit’s conclusion. One team developed an idea for an electronic pill-dispensing device, while another designed a soft knee brace embedded with sensors that could sense when the knee was at its most vulnerable and then stiffen to provide extra support. A third team proposed a virtual reality simulation for improved productivity in training and certifying surgeons – a “flight simulator” for surgeons.
Participants from Vocollect Healthcare Systems, Medrad, UPMC Health System, Kaiser Permanente, the Jewish Healthcare System, Johns Hopkins University, Lehigh University, mSpoke, Inc. and Touchtown, Inc. attended the summit.
CMU Qatar Update - A Breathtaking New Idea With the Help of the Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program - by Andrea Zrimsek (2009 Akhbar magazine)
Dr. Nedaa Nassief is one of the 300 million people in the world who suffers from asthma, a chronic disease involving the respiratory system where the airways constrict, become inflamed and are lined with excessive amounts of mucus. “Asthma is a disease of urbanization. It’s a worldwide epidemic that is expected to grow to 400 million by the year 2025. It has a high rate of hospitalization with an increasing trend in morbidity and mortality in the urbanized world. There is major need for new medications,” she says.
As a medical doctor who specialized in respiratory medicine, Nassief began doing research on the pathology of asthma in Iraq in 1993. Her research led to the finding that Glycophosphopeptical (AM3), a drug already on the market for the treatment of viral hepatitis, was an effective treatment for asthma. Nassief continued her research until 1998 and obtained a patent for AM3 in the U.K. With no business background, she was unsure about how to move AM3 forward, which is why she signed up for the inaugural Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program (CIEP) at Carnegie Mellon Qatar in August 2007.
The CIEP is a nine-month, part-time course designed to provide people like Nassief with the skills and resources to commercialize technology and take their ideas to market. Experienced entrepreneurs and Carnegie Mellon professors teach courses in entrepreneurship, technology commercialization and business planning. “I knew the instructors in this program had experience I could benefit from.”
Nassief partnered with fellow CIEP student Dr. Pascal Derde, a veterinarian at Al Shaqab Stud Farm with years of experience running businesses, and began working on a business plan for CliniPharma. “Dr. Pascal has an understanding of the business side and the medical side so he is able to explain our product to non-medical people.”
With the classes as well as the guidance and support of CIEP instructors Dr. Arthur Boni, Dr. Tom Emerson, George White and George Vector, CliniPharma has been steadily moving forward with getting AM3 to the market. In addition to the knowledge gained from the course, CliniPharma won the CIEP business plan competition, which came with a prize of QR 100,000 and a one-year mentorship at Qatar Science and Technology Park.
Additionally, Nassief and Derde were introduced to Dr. David Skoner, an asthma specialist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., where Carnegie Mellon has its flagship campus. Through this partnership, Derde was able to attend the Nemacolin Asthma Conference and meet top researchers in the field of asthma.
Nassief says CliniPharma plans to set up an office at the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse and conduct clinical trials of the drug in Pittsburgh. She also hopes to secure office space at QSTP to continue conducting research and to maintain a global presence for AM3. “The average annual cost per asthma patient is $4,912. Every year in the U.S. alone there are two million emergency room visits; 500,000 hospitalizations; and 5,000 deaths due to asthma. CliniPharma is dedicated to becoming a leader in the development of new asthma medication.”
CTTEC Announces New Focus on Community Building and Launches New Web Site - by Tara Branstad, Associate Director - CTTEC
The Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation (CTTEC) is embarking on a new strategy to strengthen outreach, broaden our network and build communities. With a continuously growing number of licenses and new spin-off companies, CTTEC has successfully leveraged expertise internally by partnering with synergistic departments across campus (like the Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship).
Our next goal is to develop an active base of contributors drawn from across the broader CMU network to help further accelerate commercialization activities. To meet this goal, we are putting together a program to foster the development of expert communities. With a growing assortment of technologies with different needs, large-scale success can only be achieved by leveraging a robust and inter-connected network.
We have revamped our Web site with up-to-date information about our processes, licensing and commercialization opportunities, and examples of past successes. We will also broadcast promising technology opportunities early in the assessment process through popular social media channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive resource with news items and announcements that you can follow, interact with, and easily share with your networks.
Over time we will be adding rich immersive content such as podcasts, Web casts and surveys where members of the community can interact directly with CTTEC and early-stage technology opportunities. For more information, or to get a head start in participating in our community, please contact CTTEC at innovation@cmu.edu or visit our Web site.
