Building World-Class Startup Programs in Higher Education | Best Practices w/ Industry Experts

One of the things that cognitive diversity is, one of the things that I've been preaching about since the beginning of my career in technical recruitment, simply because we want to have the best people on the teams, right? And we want that creativity of, you know, different perspectives. And a lot of times it could, it doesn't have to be, you know, it's not related to gender, it's not related to where people are coming from, or race or anything like that. It could be, you know, years of experience. It could be people that have pivoted several times in their careers, you know, people that are highly specialized in specific areas more so than others. And I would say when, you know, you're looking at different talent, you want to give everybody the benefit of the doubt and ask them As many open-ended questions as possible. Don't go by a script, but actually have conversations with them. And before you ever present the opportunity to them, you want to get that background experience and what motivates them, what they're ideally looking for, how they problem solve, how they critically think. And then you can sort of start narrowing down what type of positions they would be best suited for. Some people don't want to be in leadership. Some people are excellent individual contributors. And there's a, there's a job for everybody. But so I would say that that's one of my main best practices is just asking open-ended questions, having more of a conversation before you present the actual opportunity, get all of that information up front, and then you can decide the type of opportunity that you would want to present to them and having that flexibility. I rarely ever go by job descriptions when I'm identifying talent many times when I'm building teams for companies. I craft the job opportunity based on the person that I find.

Okay. Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining today's session with Founder Institute. Today we are going to be talking about best practices for innovation hubs when it comes to building innovation hubs for university and colleges. We're just getting started. So in the chat, if you're joining, please, some of you have already done so, please let us know who you are and where you're joining from today. Some of you have already done so. And just wanted to keep in mind as well that today, self-promotion, we want to keep that to a minimum. Everyone is of course here to connect with others. We don't want to be pushing services in this moment. So if we see you spamming in the chat, they may— you may get kicked out. I also wanted to confirm that everyone who registered to attend will be emailed the replay, and that will be by the end of the week. Also, if you're having any issues with the platform, just make sure that you've joined through a desktop or a laptop with Chrome or Firefox. Sometimes mobile and other browsers don't work the best with, uh, with Airmeet. Um, but there is an app that you can join as well, and you can do a little systems check if it's not working. Okay, awesome. I'm just checking the chat to see where everyone is joining from. Thank you so much. Um, okay, so I'll get started with, uh, today's session. Just wanted to mention as well, we do have the chat, but we also have a Q&A feature. You'll see the Q&A feature where you can actually submit a question and you can actually decide to upvote other people's questions if it's something you're interested in hearing about, and then I will moderate those and ask the speakers. I'm joining from Toronto. My name is Daniel Francavilla. I am the founder of The Good Growth Company and also a marketing advisor and brand strategist working with founders and social good ventures. Okay, let's get, let's get started. I would love to be able to bring on our panel to introduce themselves. I am also going to, by the way, set up a a quick poll question so that you can describe your primary role within the ecosystem. So welcome to our speakers. We have Bianca and Nafis. We're going to get started with a quick introduction. Bianca, we will start with you.

Thank you, Daniel. My name is Bianca Diosdado. I'm founder and CEO of iTrade STEM, where we are redefining STEM by accelerating job creation in the space economy, technology, energy, and manufacturing sectors. And we're doing that by providing talent, technology, and managed security services, uh, as well as automating, uh, tax credits and leveraging training reimbursement grants and things like that. Looking forward to this talk with you guys.

Thank you, Bianca. And where are you tuning in from today?

Fort Lauderdale.

Okay, awesome. All right, Nafis, over to you.

Yeah, thank you so much, Daniel, and, um, really glad to be here, uh, for this conversation. So, uh, I'm joining in from Toronto. It's a beautiful summer day here. Um, so a quick background: I've worn a lot of different hats in my career, but currently I'm the Associate Director of Entrepreneurship at YSpace. Which is the entrepreneurship hub and accelerator at York University. For those joining internationally, York is one of the 3 biggest institutions in Canada. And, you know, with our programming, we span across incubation and acceleration for companies in tech, in CPG for food and bev companies. We have specialized programs in AI, health tech, some specific priority verticals. And we're also unique in the sense that we support, you know, students and alumni, but you also don't have to be a student and alumni to work with us. So we have a broad scope to support Canadian innovators as well as international innovators through the platform that we have here. So excited to be here.

Great, thank you, Dafis. So we have a couple people who answered the question in the poll. If you can see just below the discussion, there is a Q&A button and then there's a poll button. So you can actually just take a quick jump at that and vote to let us know which describes your role within the university or post-secondary ecosystem. I understand some of you may also be in colleges or potentially other sources of education training. Okay, that being said, we're going to dive right into the question. We will start off with one to define the word innovation hub. So in one sentence, how do each of you define innovation hub and why does that matter now more than ever? I will start with you, Bianca.

So to me, an innovation hub is a place that encompasses multifaceted— is my camera not working right now?

It's not.

Yeah.

I don't know why that is.

It was working earlier though.

Yeah.

But why don't you try to adjust it after? We'll still get your answer.

Yeah, sure. So an innovation hub to me is a place that encompasses multifaceted, highly cognitively diverse people. Of different backgrounds and that welcomes a variety of institutions, whether it's educational institutions, public and private sectors, all in one hub to share ideas and accelerate innovation and opportunities.

Got it. Okay. And Nafis, what about you? How do you define innovation hub?

Yeah, I mean, you know, very similar to what Bianca described. I would say for me, it's, it's a sandbox environment where we invite, you know, all the different stakeholders, you know, students, researchers, public, private investors, all these different stakeholders in the ecosystem to come together and help us build and grow something new and unique that contributes back to the society.

Great. Okay. And now, Nafis, while we have you, let's talk specifically about your journey into university-based innovation. You're at York U right now. What led you to your current role at YSpace?

Yeah, it's a crazy thing to reflect on. I feel like I often say I was just kind of born into this ecosystem. So, you know, I've been part of a few different incubator accelerator ecosystems. I studied at Ryerson previously, which is now Toronto Metropolitan University, where I was learning business and technology. At the same time, I was also working on a few different entrepreneurial side projects of myself. And Ryerson at the time had the DMZ, which is their version of the accelerator and entrepreneurship hub. So just, I would say by luck, you know, I applied, started working with their operations team. And for me, I've always been entrepreneurial. I thought I was gonna, you know, start a company right after school. And very, very quickly realized that, hey, this is, It's really awesome that like, you know, within a school ecosystem there are these entrepreneurs that have access to. So that's kind of where it started. I've worn a lot of different hats. I've, you know, done some side stuff of my own entrepreneurially, but from the DMZ I moved to, at the time it was the world's first legal tech incubator. So that was called Legal Innovation Zone. That was a really unique environment being the first staff to really help grow that out. Took that to a more global platform. And then over the last 5 years, I've been at York University building out the entrepreneurship hub here and trying to scale that from this perspective. So I've seen it from a lot of different angles.

That's great. Thank you. So, so 3 different university-based incubators or innovation hubs, correct?

Yeah, that's right. It's been a journey.

Definitely. Okay, Bianca, based on your work and your role right now, how have you helped to bridge the skills gap in the workforce? Obviously, a big part of, you know, university education is teaching skills and helping people get into the workforce. So why does bridging skills matter for universities today?

It absolutely matters for universities, simply because technology is advancing, and it's moving so fast that by the time corporations and public institutions need to hire workers, they need people to have the practical skills day one. Obviously, when professionals go into a work environment, they want opportunity for growth. There should be some opportunity cost so that they can gain some skills on the job. That's where growth happens. However, it's a lot of educational institutions, universities, and public schools, they they don't renew their curriculum as often as they probably should. Some of them renew their curriculum every 5 years and they're not allowed to. So it's super important for these universities and these educational institutions to be aligned with these corporations to really understand what they're looking for and provide the students with experiential learning so that they can gain the practical skills. Um, there's, there's book smarts and there's, uh, there's street smarts, and we want to have that cognitive, um, diversity and those soft skills too so that people can learn and adapt more quickly. Um, the, the skills are— the, the hard skills are not the only things that are important for companies. A times, and most of the time, it's really the ability to learn, the ability to unlearn and relearn, adaptability that's a lot more important just because technology is moving so fast. So what we do to bridge these skills gaps is partner with nonprofits, partner with educational institutions, public-private institutions, universities, technical colleges, and we create opportunities, not just boot camps, but on-the-job training opportunities. Apprenticeship programs so that we can be that bridge for these universities and give students or graduates an opportunity to learn on the job. And there are so many different incentives out there leveraging grants for training reimbursements up to 75% of salary, up to 6 months a lot of times to reimburse for that salary for the training that is on the job for these these workers, and there's other ways to monetize things to reduce those operating costs because it is expensive to create jobs. But depending on the university and depending on what the market bears, because it does change every, you know, before it was like every year or two I would see market changes. Now I'm seeing so much, they're so much faster. Every, you know, 3 to 6 months I'm seeing changes in the market. Depending on what the needs are at the time, it's really important to be flexible and adapt and modify the programs according to what the market actually needs and partner with those universities and tailor the curriculum and tailor the on-the-job training opportunities, the apprenticeship programs. Many times we create apprenticeship programs based on current market needs as opposed to what was discussed, you know, 6 months ago or a year ago.

Makes sense. Thank you. And also, I want to ask Nafit, in your experience, because you've worked with different, different organizations, and perhaps you've, you've seen what's happening at other universities, what are some of the common misconceptions that university leaders have when it comes to innovation or entrepreneurship programs?

Yeah, it's a good question. I would say it's kind of hard to put that into like a one-liner. I think, you know, every leadership will have a different take on it. I think, you know, initially when I started in the ecosystem, a lot of the role of the innovation hubs was like, oh, how many of our students are we turning into like startup companies? And I think when you create that as the ultimate expectation, it actually takes away from that student journey on like exploring entrepreneurship as a viable career, right? So I think, you know, that's one thing that I learned over time is being a university-based innovation hub, it can't, the metric can't be the student conversion of entrepreneurship. It should more be about how are we upskilling our students a lot to what Bianca was saying, you know, how are we upskilling our students to, help them explore this as a world, as an ecosystem, because many times your first startup is not gonna be your best startup. Also, you probably should join a startup company first to learn and then apply that into your startup. So I think, you know, that's a bit of a misconception that, you know, I've worked with along with our leadership over the last few years to help them redefine the success around innovation hubs. And now we have a system where, like, you know, we have a very active placement opportunity that we've created for currently York-based students that want to work with startups. And then as they evolve, they have these programming that we've developed for, like, truly when you're at that startup stage, you could go through and start accelerating the pace of that, that, that growth. So I think, you know, that's one area that, that we really put a lot of focus on. Again, it really depends, right? There are a number of factors that go into it. It just kind of depends on the current market stage and where leadership's focus also comes in.

That makes a lot of sense, obviously. And I think things, things are changing as well, right? With, with the rate at which entrepreneurship is climbing and becoming more and more into the, you know, the public lens, people are looking for alternative career options with the way that, you know, the jobs and the economy is going. So there's— I think you'll probably— you've probably seen an increase, you know, in the amount of people people that are interested but may still not have a clear understanding of how these programs specifically, uh, can work, right? Um, Bianca, on that note, when we talk about, you know, all these different players involved— there's universities, there's government agencies, there's, you know, incubators, accelerators, there's corporate America, right— how do we solve some of the gaps between all of these groups?

There just needs to be much more collaboration across the board and, and having real conversations. Um, it's very difficult sometimes to work with organizations that have, you know, their regulatory processes, and, uh, sometimes it's really more bureaucracy, and it's very difficult to get programs through, um, you know, just needing certain signatures, and it's really more administrative paperwork that causes it to, to slow down. Um, that being said, over the last year, I have noticed that it's becoming a lot more easy for these government agencies and educational institutions to have more flexibility and be more open to new ideas simply because there's almost no choice. Technology is just moving so fast. The markets are changing so fast. AI is exponentially growing. Yes, we need, you know, more small businesses, but even there's a lot of pressure in larger organizations to innovate. And I'm seeing companies actually invest in intrapreneurs employees that are being more creative and have that entrepreneurial spirit internally, and they're actually investing in them. And I am actually seeing startups growing as other strategic arms of much larger organizations because they're a lot more fast to innovate, a lot more efficient. And, and I am also seeing a lot more administrative processes becoming more, just a lot more smooth. And I'm also seeing organizations, government agencies, and also educational institutions that are adapting, adopting technology that will allow them to be a lot more efficient and flexible and adaptable. So I would say we're moving in the right direction. We should continue to move in the right direction. Being open to having conversations and allowing for that creativity and bringing in new programs is super important. I am seeing a lot more of that. Part of it is because it is fun and it's logical, but another reason also is because there's almost no choice. The market is just moving way too fast and we live in a— it's not just about the countries falling within the parameters and the rules of engagement within the countries. Now we're having countries are having to compete globally. So the world has become a lot more flat from that standpoint.

Makes sense. Thank you for the thorough answer on that. I think that's a really important piece. And Founder Institute is also, you know, an incredible organization and resource who now has resources for universities, and they do collaborate with multiple bodies to help make this happen. Okay, when it comes to emerging tech verticals, do either of you have thoughts on which, which one universities should prioritize in the next few years, whether it's, you know, cybersecurity, or AI, or blockchain, or, you know, agtech? Is there anything specifically that you think they should focus on?

I could answer that question. So I've been a mentor with Founder Institute for over 10 years now, and they're one of the organizations that I have partnered with that does lead by example consistently over the years. And the— man, I lost my train of thought.

That's okay. Which, which vertical? Which vertical do you think?

Oh, the verticals. Yes, thank you. Um, so I have partnered up with, with the Founder Institute over the years, and we have seen a wide variety of startups coming out. Um, some have been extremely successful. Um, the— through the sectors that I'm focusing on as of late are in space economy, technology, the energy industry, my advanced manufacturing sectors, Technology is a driving force across the board. I would say manufacturing is probably the highest priority out of all those 4 where there's the most growth and there is the most, you know, speak for, you know, even within the United States, there's a lot of incentives right now happening within the manufacturing sectors.

Great. And what about you, Nafis?

Yeah, I could add to that. I mean, I think I refuse to say there's like a blanket answer around sectors. I think we're at the stage where every sector and every industry is gonna evolve and change. We're kind of hitting that next layer of evolution, I would say. So I think a couple things is I believe AI is eventually gonna become a commodity, right? Where it's gonna translate into every sector and every industry. So I don't think that's a choice anymore. It's almost like AI is the new cloud. Everyone is gonna be on the cloud. Right? But I think, you know, when it comes to looking at specific verticals outside of that, I think, you know, universities and innovation hubs need to really understand what are their strengths and what are priority sectors. So the way that we, you know, pick a couple verticals that we want to dive really deep into and specialize into is, one, we do a lot of market research working with our municipal partners, our government partners, as well as corporates. To understand where trends and priority sectors that they want support on, where there's a gap in the ecosystem. And then we also then relate that back to what are strengths at York University, what are strengths that we have seen from our broader portfolio of companies that we can merge all of it together to go deep into those verticals. So I think for us it's going to evolve. I don't think I can pick one over the other. For us, we've realized at York sectors that we want to double down into, at least for the next couple of years, is healthcare, agri-food, agri-tech, advanced manufacturing, automotive, and smart cities. So those are a couple areas where we have some strengths, and then we're diving super, super into over the next couple of years. But I think it's going to evolve.

Can I add to that, Nafis?

Yeah, absolutely.

I totally agree with you. I also think that AI and cybersecurity are the buzz right now. I'm seeing a lot of students that have cybersecurity degrees or AI degrees, but I always explain to people that organizations need generalists. They do want people that specialize, but they also really need people that are generalists that are looking at the big picture where they are able to go into those different sectors. Like you mentioned, agritech and healthcare. Healthcare technology, manufacturing, energy industry, the people that are advancing the fastest are the ones that have that big picture industry experience, but that also have a cybersecurity mindset or that have the ability to code or use AI or build AI agents or automate processes and stuff like that. I did, I did want to add that because I do believe that there's going to be a huge need and standard to know how to use AI. Cybersecurity is getting a lot more, is becoming a much higher priority for companies, but they don't always live in a security operations center. They need to also have those skills when they work in different departments, you know, cross-marketing or finance or accounting or, you know, it and whatnot. I did want to mention that because I do think it's super imperative.

Absolutely. Makes sense. I do want to jump to a question from the Q&A that we received. Tyler had said, great perspective, Nafis, on changing the North Star metric. So how do you go about creating those partnerships with startups that are hiring within York since some are sometimes in stealth mode? Are there any particularly successful strategies?

Yeah, tons. I would say even those that are in stealth mode are always looking for great talent. So I think being at the university, that is actually one of our strengths is being able to curate that top talent. Couple things that have worked really well for us is, A, we've made the process really simple. So we work very closely with our career services team, we built an internal champion there that knows how to work with our startups, knows how startups work, knows how disorganized they can be at sometimes. So they help coach the startups on, you know, best practices. Sometimes they also help coach the students on how to approach it properly. It's not going to be the same interview and work life as going into a corporate. So there's that, like, creating an honest transaction there, you know, in terms of that relationship. That's one. The other thing is So as an innovation hub, we've also really prioritized helping them tap into government incentives, which make these first early hires really, you know, a no-brainer for them. When, you know, 75%, sometimes 100% of, you know, the talent is subsidized by the government. Again, depending on where you are, you may have different opportunities available to you, but we really tap into all of those opportunities and kind of package it together. That's the second one. And then the third one is, again, it's like curating. So I think our job is to curate that journey for the founders so that they are spending their time building and not trying, you know, spending 5, 10 hours figuring out how do I hire someone. So we've really kind of packaged that, the check-ins that we do with companies, we push them and we're like, hey, what can you do with a student? And let's make sure this is the right student that you're hiring. So a lot of that curation, I think, you know, is part of what's also allowed us to be successful with that.

That's great. Thank you, Nafis. Very thorough answer. I think that's really helpful. We have another question from Victoria, who is asking about the best practices for effective collaboration and learning opportunities from each other when bringing together teams from different backgrounds in, you know, different stages of their learning journeys. As Bianca framed it, cognitively diverse. So do either of you have any best practices here for collaboration?

Yes, that's one of the things that cognitive diversity is, one of the things that I've been preaching about since the beginning of my career in technical recruitment, simply because we want to have the best people on the teams, right? And we want that creativity of different perspectives. And a lot of times it doesn't have to be— it's not related to gender, it's not related to where people are coming from or race or anything like that. It could be years of experience. It could be people that have pivoted several times in their careers. People that are highly specialized in specific areas more so than others. And I would say when, you know, you're looking at different talent, you want to give everybody the benefit of the doubt and ask them as many open-ended questions as possible. Don't go by a script, but actually have conversations with them. And before you ever present the opportunity to them, you want to get that background experience and what what motivates them, what they're ideally looking for, how they problem solve, how they critically think. And then you can sort of start narrowing down what type of positions they would be best suited for. Some people don't want to be in leadership. Some people are excellent individual contributors, and there's a, there's a job for everybody. But so I would say that that's one of my main best practices is just asking open-ended questions, having more of a conversation before you present the actual opportunity, get all of that information up front, and then you can decide the type of opportunity that you would want to present to them. And having that flexibility, I rarely ever go by job descriptions when I'm identifying talent. Many times when I'm building teams for companies, I craft the job opportunity based on the person that I find. And I keep all of those different soft skills and other practical skills of talent across the team in mind as I build that team. And many times it looks eclectic, but it's really rewarding to see how quickly they help companies grow and how teams sometimes stay together through multiple mergers and acquisitions and centralizations and digital transformations. It doesn't really matter if it's a midsize, large company, or a startup. You want to really develop that relationship with talent. The timing may not be right right now, but maybe as your team grows, as the company grows, as the needs grow, you can always follow up with that person later and continue to maintain that relationship.

Makes sense. Thank you so much.

If I could add a little bit to that, you know, when it comes to like formation of the founding teams, I love the kind of the hacker, hustler, and hipster framework. I don't know if everyone's familiar with that. It's basically an oversimplification of like, you know, every good startup has someone that's a hacker that knows how to build, someone that's a hipster that, you know, has that future vision and thinks differently to everyone else. So the Steve Jobs and the Wozniak, right? And then the hustler who knows how to sell, right? So I think typically in those early days of formation of teams, especially with startup teams, I think that framework I found to be very helpful. And then I think the layering on top of that is actually building ownership. So making sure that every person, whoever identifies with those kind of three factors, they have complete ownership over that field. And, you know, even though they may push back, push each other back and forth, which should be a good environment for that team to help them grow. I think that framework I found to be really, really supportive, especially in the early days of forming teams.

Great. All right. Makes sense. Thank you so much. Great answers from both of you on that. Question. Thank you for asking. So we'll jump back into some of the other questions we have here, talking about maybe some of the challenges or issues. Nafis, there's often a gap between what the industry needs and what academia delivers or what they're focusing on. How does a program— how do some of the programs that you work on help bridge that gap, whether it's, you know, your current programs or what other incubators within schools are doing?

Yeah, 100%. Um, I think it's, it's often, I think that's the role that we play, like whoever, you know, the folks that are in the, in the Innovation Hub role, um, is kind of project manage and help the academic side understand like, hey, they're not looking for, you know, this in terms of research papers, they're looking for like what can be translated into this, right? Um, so a lot of times it's just that they're communicating in very different levels. The industry wants this, the researchers think they want this, right? And like, you know, it could be toppled all the way around. So, you know, one thing that we do is like we, we become that middle person to help project management and manage both sides. In terms of what we have done, you know, I think we've developed a couple of interesting programs. One particularly that we're just in the, in currently supporting is a program called Lab to Market. So it's an initiative all across Canada to help research-based, you know, strong like IP research, research to help commercialize that from universities. And you know how it works is you have postdocs and then you have professors, they think they're onto something, we put them through this structured framework where they go through layers of validation, discovery, and try to optimize them towards launching something for the market. So that's been an exciting thing that we've seen. And a lot of times what we do is help them tap into the industry, right? So hey, you've built this really interesting thing in your lab, right? Does anyone actually care? So then, you know, we'll get them out to the world and get them to talk to industry people to see, do they care? Where do they care? What do they care about? Like, you know, that entire kind of startup journey. We kind of help push them through that in a structured framework that academia understands. So that's one. I think there are lots of great examples, but I think, you know, to simplify that answer, a lot of our role is to help be that kind of middle project manager that helps communicate the right thing and then, you know, builds the right metrics from, from both sides, from an expectation standpoint. Thank you.

Makes sense. For, for both of you, when it comes to, you know, edgy tech like crypto, AI, other things, there's a lot of fear for reputational risk. So how should a university put together a risk management framework that still lets founders move fast? Do either of you have thoughts on this?

One of the biggest risks in implementing AI in organizations is that there's no guardrails. Once you implement an AI LLM, an agent, you're subjected to whatever security risks they have. And there's now, you know, things like prompt injections and all kinds of things. But there is technology out there already that you can integrate into the enterprise systems within the universities so that it can scan internal AI apps and LLMs and also third-party LLMs where the organization can get notified if something is vulnerable or if it's not clean, if it has malware in it. And you can build guardrails within the educational institution. It completely scans it with— on the network. And there's also AI technology that allows for horizontal AI orchestration so that the students can have access only to the data that they should have access to while still keeping the security and the governance centralized across the university or the organization. So it allows for the creativity of the students, and it also gives that peace of mind in the university that they're secure and they're not going to be left vulnerable.

My answer to that, I'll take a different angle with it. I think usually with risk management, It's always like they're coming from a place of fear and liability and it's always like, no, you can't do this and yes, this is what you can do. I think it's almost like the role that we have to play as well in terms of when it's crafting these frameworks is how do we start with a yes? How do we help envision? Yes, if this works, these are the great positive impacts that it could have and then work it backwards to Okay, X, Y, and Z needs to be figured out. Here's how we can help figure that piece out, right? So I think as university environments, we need to kind of almost shift that mentality with the yes and, right, framework and, and, and become partners in that journey, right? Hey, tap into this professor that has this expertise that can help you figure out like, these are maybe 5 areas that you really need to build some As Bianca said, you need to build some guardrails around to ensure that you're not crossing the barrier into the unknown or whatever the other side is. I think it's a bit of a cultural shift in our mindsets because ultimately I think universities should be a place where we allow a lot of things in protected environments to test, to fail. Right. And a lot of things will fail, but out of that, you know, one will become the innovation that changes the world. So, you know, it's a bit of a cultural mindset, I think.

Then also labs can be built within the university. They're completely, you know, containerized. There's containerized virtual desktops where, you know, they can be secure and you can allow for the build out of those AI agents or apps within that specific containerized environment, and it's completely segmented. But there's, there's, there's plenty of ways to go around it if the university really does want it, right? And especially if the, if the market needs it and, and the students need to be able to apply what they're learning. In the classroom, they need to apply it at the same time because it's just moving so fast. It'll be like I'm seeing students coming out of universities that are 2 or more years behind from the regular market.

We had a question related to what Nafis was saying about the culture, having a culture of being able to just do these things and test things and being willing to experiment. Huda from the Center, uh, Center for Entrepreneurship Innovation, uh, in Libya said, or wanted to ask, what are the most important practices that we should implement to promote the culture of entrepreneurship and essentially to, to encourage innovation?

If I could boil that answer into one thing, it's creating an environment where we encourage failure. I think the best innovations in the world come from failing But when we foster an environment where people can fail really quickly, but they have, you know, they have an environment where they're learning really quickly from the failure and then they're iterating on top, which is the most crucial thing in the startup journey. It's just that muscle of, you know, failing, learning, failing, learning, building, building, building on top. So I think from a cultural standpoint, that's probably the most important thing that we could build. In a hub or ecosystem.

I totally agree. Yeah, I don't see it— they call it, they say it's failing forward, right? But I see it as more like pivoting. I don't even consider research and development and testing out new technologies. It's a part of our day-to-day, and I see it more as like is pivoting. And if something doesn't work, don't even— like, it doesn't even faze you. It should— you should just remove it from your brain, compartmentalize it, throw it away, learn from the experience, and try something different. And it's, it's almost gamified. It, it, it should be part of the culture and, uh, making it fun to learn and, and adapt quickly. So yeah, that's a really good point, Nefes.

If I— sorry, if I could also add to that, actually, something just popped up on my mind. The opposite of not creating that environment of failing, failing forward, is we're going to coddle entrepreneurs, we're going to coddle ideas, we're going to coddle, you know, that entire journey, which is taking away from them. They're losing money and sleep and, and all of that. So I think, I actually think there's a bit of a saturation where there are a lot of great ideas, there are also ideas that are not so great, and we should allow that to see its natural course, fail, but but then help them move forward as fast as they possibly can into their next idea. So I think not coddling them and really creating that environment that like, you know, they jump fully in, they fail if they need to, but they learn from it as Bianca mentioned, failing forward and moving on.

Yeah, and I think that that's really important because within, you know, innovation programs and, you know, entrepreneurial programs, I think that's understood. But potentially within, you know, other structures or other environments, there might need to be a little bit more level setting, right? That actually we do expect this significant percentage to fail or to— things, things won't go as planned, but we do expect that there will be some, you know, results and success. It might not look like what you thought it was, but maybe it's going to be even more successful or maybe more impactful, right? So I think that's a challenge too, is setting those expectations up front. Okay, I wanted to move into the, the last section here of, of our topics, and we can get to some more of the Q&A, which is about resolution, right? So what are some of the actionable insights and features that we're thinking about? So I wanted to ask each of you this question: if you had 90 days and a $50,000 pilot budget What program element would you first launch to prove traction?

Bianca, do you want to go first or me?

Why not? I would create an apprenticeship program, create apprenticeship programs, on-the-job training opportunities, and that's what I would kick off first. With a focus on, um, cybersecurity and AI for the energy industry and manufacturing sectors. And I would gamify it, uh, I would gamify it. I would, um, allow for the students to get that on-the-job training experience. Some of them may become entrepreneurs, have an entrepreneurial track. Some of them may become employees of companies but just by simply having those entrepreneurial skills, they will be— it will open up so many doors because those are the most highly sought-after skills that corporations and companies are looking for.

It's a great answer. I'll have to switch mine up a little bit. I think, you know, kind of go back to to some of the stuff that I've alluded to earlier. I think I would build a program. We've done some of this already, so I guess I'm cheating. We would build a program where I think over a timed period, maybe over a couple months, folks can come in with really strong and interesting IP, and we're allowing them to go through that entrepreneurship fail fast, fail forward framework, helping them validate that. But I think what I would really do is bring in really strong industry partners that also come on board. So I would try to turn that $50K into a $200K thing with industry partners that would actually buy into the IP. So to me, if I want to build traction and show that this works, That's the, you know, that's like the metric that I would go for is like, can I get industry partners to actually buy in this IP and put some dollars, like put the money where their mouth is basically. So that's kind of the environment that I would build.

There you go. Okay, that's great. And to kind of be intentional about that from, from the beginning, right? As opposed to looking to bring in someone after. Okay, another question. Actually, we'll switch gears to my questions and we'll go a little bit to some final Q&A towards the end. So Bianca, how do you think that the dean of a university or someone in charge of the school could help to enable different ecosystem alliances and partnerships since we know that this is so important to connect with industry?

I would say Participate, participate with the, the organizations and the innovation partners that are mission-driven and that want to make a difference and be involved in that decision-making process and that creativity and really curating the programs that make the most sense for the industries as well as for the, the mission of the dean for that university. University. I would just ask them to be more involved and to have more input and to meet and collaborate a lot more with the organizations that are driving a lot of these efforts on the private industry side.

Okay, thank you. A question that I had but was also essentially asked by one of the individuals on our attendees here today, was talking about some of the mentorship and kind of bringing in external supports, right? So Saeed had asked, what, what about the expert mentorship? Because many educational institutions lack experts that can support students about the startup ecosystem. Alongside incubation centers, there's a significant need for experts to teach and mentor to develop leaders. Now, I know of many accelerators and incubators that do have these experts, industry experts. However, I could see how it's probably not easy to recruit them if they're very busy building, building their startups. Founder Institute does an amazing job at pulling in mentors from around the world to do this. But do either of you have any thoughts on the importance of the role of expert mentorship?

Yes, there's a—

sorry, you're a mentor with Boundary Institute, maybe you start.

Yeah, sure. I've actually tested the market a few times and I have helped different organizations find teachers and I like— I was very pleasantly surprised and happy to see that there are a lot of very well-educated people that have private industry experience that want to teach. Some of them are pivoting, some of them just really want to contribute, and it's part of their civic duty to helping students be successful and mentoring them. And some of them are close to retirement and they want to transfer expert and share their knowledge. Foundry Institute has an amazing network globally of people that are highly specialized in, in, you know, so many different industries— space, satellite, telecommunications, so many different sectors. And, you know, not just because I'm one of them, but the people that I've met within the Foundry Institute's global network are You know, they're very interesting, very impressive people, and they're very willing to travel and participate in a lot of these programs. Success a lot of times is not really worth gaining if you don't share it. So it's a blessing to be able to share that experience to others, especially if there are students that want to learn and that are eager to. And hungry to grow. So yeah, I would say being open for the university to be open to bringing in people from the private sector into the university environment and actually allow them to share that knowledge and that experience so that they can bridge the gap between what the companies are actually looking for, what the market actually bears, and what the universities are teaching. Allows the students as well to analyze and apply what they're learning from the private industry into the classroom.

That's, yeah, that's incredibly important. By the way, I did put another poll in about what is the single most important outcome that you expect from an entrepreneurship program. There's a few, there's a few options here. You can continue to vote. Let us know what you think. The poll is open there. Now, there was a question I wanted to ask about, you know, models and frameworks that you found most effective, Nafis, in embedding entrepreneurship into curriculum or to extracurricular programs. And I wanted to highlight a question here from Tyler where he asked essentially for entrepreneurship programs that are tied to academic coursework? Have you had any strategies that are particularly successful at getting students to embrace failure and unlearn their reliance on grades and success? And I have to say too that I've taught some courses, not entrepreneurship courses, but in the advertising space. And absolutely, sometimes you gotta get out there and take a risk where your concept that you're gonna go test, the community, the stakeholders that you're gonna go interview might give you completely different results than you were expecting. and you might not get the result you were thinking for your project. Um, but to that point, uh, Nafis, if you have any thoughts on this one, or if you have any models or frameworks that can help embed entrepreneurship into curriculum.

Yeah, I think I'll maybe speak to a little bit more high level here and then, and then, you know, happy to dig in. But let's say, I think the biggest factor around that is if you're going to build it within an academic setting, you actually have to help take the students out of the academic setting. So like, can you, you know, even starting with where you're hosting the classes, can you host it in an innovation space? Just by fostering that, it, you know, it creates an environment where they're looking at entrepreneurs, are looking at all these things that are getting built. And, you know, their mindset is almost shifting without you having to do all of the hard work and yelling at them. So I think, you know, the role from, from that standpoint is like, not tell them that they have to be entrepreneurs, or they have to do this or that. It's to help them really go through that discovery process, take them out of the academic setting, take them into unique spaces, take them into unique conversations, right? Maybe, you know, as, as a, you know, your grades, it's not a 20-page report, but it's them going out to, you know, a startup conference and, you know, talking about what they learned at the startup stage, right? So I think it's, it's almost like completely shifting the way that we look at it from an academic experience, really pulling in that experiential learning environment for the students and then helping them take on their pathway naturally. Because let's be frank, most students are probably not trying to be entrepreneurs, right? They have a lot of debt that they're trying to pay off. Um, so, you know, they'll either take on, you know, entrepreneurial skills and join corporates— most probably will. Um, but those that where the mindset needs to shift and click, if you create that environment, they'll jump right in and they'll go 100% into it. Um, so don't tell them what to do, help create the right environments for to succeed in there.

That's great. Thank you.

One of the—

oh, yeah, go ahead. If I can just add, and also using the university labs and cyber ranges for those innovation hubs that are built within the university, and again, building that relationship with the professors, and you can get creative with For example, the references for those apprenticeship programs, on-the-job training opportunities, using the university resources and using some of that on-the-job training curriculum that's tied to a grade with a professor, you know, references on how they did. If at the end of the program there's a pitch to investors coming from the Foundry Institute, for example, That could also be, you know, tied to, you know, whatever grades or extra credit with the professors. There's a lot of different ways that they can go about it. There's a lot of underutilized resources sometimes at universities where they can get a lot of value from by extending those assets over to those innovation programs.

Got it, thank you. And the last question from the audience we'll have time for is from Huda asking about when entrepreneurs apply for incubation programs, how can we determine whether more importance should be given to the quality of the project or the startup itself, or to the entrepreneur's personality and their ability to learn? In this case, I would summarize it as, you know, are you, are you betting on the founder, or are you betting on the idea? In this case, right? So, um, Nafis, why don't we start with you?

10 out of 10, always betting on the founder. The idea will change and it will evolve, you know, we'll go through 100 different iterations, and if they're the right founders, they'll actually see it through the 100 different iterations and, you know, figure out how to make it work. Um, you know, if it's just an idea, a lot of people have ideas but they don't have the execution that comes it. So, uh, always bet on the founders.

What about you, Bianca?

Same, same. People, uh, you may have a great idea, but if you don't have the right founders, investors will not, will not invest. Um, but if you have, you know, an average idea but an amazing founding group, investors will most likely, uh, be more apt to invest in, in the team as opposed to the idea. Okay, everybody can have an idea. It's what you do with it that matters.

Amazing. One final question is if each of you could give us one thing that a university could do tomorrow, and one metric that you would want them to be able to report back to the, to the school, to the institution. So what's one thing a university can do tomorrow when it comes to innovation? And what's one metric that you would want to be able to report to university leadership? Bianca, do you want to start?

Um, I would say talk to an innovation partner with the Founder Institute. Talk to innovation partner and just start brainstorming on what type of innovation hub or innovation program would be best suited and tailored for, for the, for the goals of the, of the university.

Absolutely.

And different metrics would be, um, the training reimbursement, um, for on-the-job training apprenticeship programs. It's 75%, up to 75% of the salaries, up to 6 months that can be reimbursed. So any, whether it's the university or whether it's the startups that are coming out of those incubation hubs, they can create jobs, but they can also monetize those tax credits or get reimbursed for those salaries up to 6 months just by simply training the students on the job.

There you go. Great, great tip and answer at the same time. That's awesome. Thank you so much to both of you for sharing. Just so that everyone knows, yes, you will have access to the recording. A couple people asked in the Q&A as well. They will send the replay links out within 48 hours. And there's a lot more resources you can look at. Sanna had posted in the chat the next event. She also let us know about where you can reach out to the innovation partners. I'm one of the innovation partners as well. Bianca is as as well. So feel free to connect with us about how you can, you know, bring some of Founder Institute's, you know, systems and learning and processes into your institution. Thank you both to Bianca and Nafis for being here. We'll wrap up the discussion and the networking lounge will remain open. So feel free to move over into the networking lounge and you'll be able to stay there and connect. Please feel free to reach out to any of us as well. Thank you so much, Bianca, Nafis, and thanks to the founders.

Daniel, this was fun. Thank you.

Thanks, everyone as well. Hope to stay in touch.

Thank you for being here. We'll see you in the network.

Awesome. Bye.