IBE Blog: Learning from failure

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Editor’s note: The Integrated Business and Engineering Honors program will graduate its first cohort of students this May. This innovative program prepares Honors engineering and business students to take a multidisciplinary approach to problem-solving. Alisa Noll is blogging about her final year in IBE and the benefits she and fellow classmates have gained. Read the first post in the series for more.

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Alisa Noll
As the pilot class of the Integrated Business & Engineering Honors program nears the end of its penultimate semester, my classmates and I are reflecting on our own growth and the fostered growth of our younger peers.

This semester the first six capstone projects began, with about five students assigned to work on each. These students represent multiple disciplines, from mechanical engineers to finance students and even design students from the Columbus College of Art & Design. We are working with four different companies (Vesco, Flocel, P&G and Stanley Black & Decker) to develop innovative products. As we’ve learned, “intrapreneurship,” innovating within an established company, is just as exciting and crucial as entrepreneurship.

By this point in the semester, we’ve hit some tough hurdles. We’ve narrowed down our consumer research interests to a few critical questions and now reached the point that usually makes or breaks a business venture. For example, right when we think we’ve discovered the perfect untapped market need, we find that no one wants to pay for this product. We need to create a product that will work, sell and produce a profit. Moreover, we’re pursuing a product that is desirable, usable and useful. By studying the failures of previous companies in each of these criteria, we attempt to make better decisions. We’ve ravaged through books such as The Innovator’s Method (Jeffrey H. Dyer and Nathan Furr), What I Didn’t Learn in Business School (Jay Barney and Trish Gorman Clifford), The Lean Startup (Eric Ries) and Good to Great (James C. Collins) to discover a solution. Now that we are actually in the situation of pivoting on our original idea and finding a willing market, books can only do so much. I feel lucky experience this hands-on in a place where we can’t “fail” and don’t have to worry about job security and personal income as we will when we attempt our own companies in the future.

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During a visit to P&G
My team got a special opportunity to visit P&G’s innovation center in Cincinnati for a full day. My peers and I interviewed members of our target audience who work at P&G with the help of Russ Speiler and Reg Crutcher, our P&G stakeholders. This was a truly insightful day that reinvigorated our motivation to search for new solutions. Nothing can teach one how to fail fast and learn from mistakes better than actual experience. This struggle we’re experiencing is part of the process and that makes it worthwhile.

Outside of the classroom, we’ve gotten to interact with the younger cohorts more than ever before. We held the first annual IBE retreat, a football game watch party and a resume workshop. The younger students, especially the freshmen class, have done a tremendous job of modeling by our example and not hesitating to reach out. It’s incredible to see the caliber of students increasing exponentially with each new class. More than half of these students already have multiple internships under their belts in the first year of college! They are closer knit than any other cohort as well.

“I chose Ohio State mostly because of IBE,” said George Valacerel. “It was between here and Columbia, which just didn’t have a network equivalent to IBE. The mentorship, group bond and multidisciplinary experience of IBE were more important to me than Columbia’s name.”

That feeling is mutual among the older students. The relationships we’re forming with younger cohorts inspire us. We’re proud of IBE’s legacy being left behind and excited for its future.

Category: Students